How science, mysticism, and sacred sound converge in the luminous field of awareness
I was reading an article on Yahoo News today titled, “Quantum Entanglement in the Brain May Explain Consciousness, Scientists Say,” and I couldn’t help but pause. Not because the idea was new, but because it was so ancient.
The article explores a new mathematical model from Shanghai University that suggests something profound: that the myelin sheaths of the brain’s neurons may produce entangled biphoton pairs—tiny particles of light linked across space in ways that seem to defy classical physics. According to the model, these biphotons could enable synchronized communication across the brain, creating a coherent structure that bears a striking resemblance to what we call “consciousness.”
Now, if you’ve been following the breadcrumbs of mysticism, metaphysics, or even speculative physics for long, you know this isn’t new. The idea that light is consciousness—that vibration is the architect of reality—has been whispered through the veils of time by sages, mystics, poets, and prophets. What this new theory does is add an unexpected layer of mathematical and neurological elegance to the old esoteric song: everything is light, and light knows.
Consciousness as Light
Before we proceed, it’s essential to recall a long-standing principle in the field of biophysics: living cells emit light.
These ultra-weak emissions, called biophotons, have been measured for decades. They occur in the ultraviolet to visible range and are not byproducts of heat but are coherent, structured emissions. Researchers, such as Fritz-Albert Popp, have demonstrated that all living organisms emit this light continuously, and that it plays a crucial role in cellular communication, signaling, and metabolic regulation.
This is not fringe science. It’s a documented, measurable reality: your body is emitting light all the time. Your cells are not just biochemical machines—they are bioluminescent beings, whispering in pulses of coherence.
So when new theories speak of biphotons in the brain, we’re not leaping into wild speculation. We’re extending what we already know: the body is already speaking in light. The real question is—what is it saying?
“God is light,” says 1 John 1:5. And the mystics nod in agreement.
From the Tibetan Book of the Dead’s “clear light of the void” to Sufi metaphysics and the luminous clarity of Dzogchen, light has always been the code word for the inner radiance of being. This theory of biphoton entanglement doesn’t replace that. It echoes it. It may be the modern nervous system’s attempt to remember something ancient.
If our biological structures are indeed generating biphotons—if the brain is an entangled resonance chamber of light—then consciousness may not be “produced” by the brain at all. It may be received, modulated, or localized. The brain becomes less a factory and more a lens—a portal.
This aligns with a concept known in quantum physics as nonlocality, where information seems to be shared instantaneously across distance. But even more aligned with mystical traditions is the deeper notion of unilocality: not that things are connected across space, but that all things are occurring in one place. The field. The ground. The source.
The Architect of Form
And this is where sound—or more precisely, vibration—enters the conversation. If light is the frequency of consciousness, vibration is the movement of knowing into being. It is how form arises from the formless.
Every wisdom tradition tells us this:
The Vedas refer to it as Nada Brahma: the world is sound.
The Bible begins with: “In the beginning was the Word.”
The Quran speaks of “Be! And it is” (Kun fa-yakun).
Even modern physics, notably string theory, proposes that the smallest particles are not particles at all—they are vibrating strings. Frequency comes first. Matter is secondary. The drumbeat is eternal; the form is fleeting.
So when we speak of biphotons, light coherence, or quantum entanglement in the brain, we are not talking about cold mechanics. We are speaking of a living symphony, a harmonic field of knowing. Consciousness doesn’t merely illuminate the world. It sings it into being.
Walter Russell and the Matrix of Knowledge
This brings us to one of the most beautiful minds of the 20th century: Walter Russell. He taught that the universe is not a mechanism, but a matrix of knowledge—a dynamic, thinking field of light. To him, motion was thought. Form was frozen light. And consciousness was the organizing principle of it all.
“All motion is but an expression of the One Idea of Mind in thinking form.”
“God is the Light that thinks the universe into being.” – Walter Russell
For Russell, all matter is light, and light is the expression of knowing. The implications are staggering: we do not have consciousness. We are consciousness—localized expressions of a single radiant knowing that is perpetually thinking itself into form through vibration.
In this model, the brain is a kind of transceiver, tuning into the frequencies of the One Field. It doesn’t store thoughts. It tunes them. Just as a radio doesn’t create music, but receives it, the self is not the source of knowing. It is the instrument through which knowing plays itself.
Unilocality and the Field of Being
So what if this field isn’t “out there” at all?
Unilocality suggests there is no “there.”
There is only here.
One here. One light. One mind, endlessly reflecting itself.
Your brain, your heart, your thoughts—they are not private events. They are wave patterns in the unified field. This aligns directly with mystical insight: that what we call individuality is simply the angle at which the Infinite sees itself.
This also collapses the duality between the inner and outer, between the soul and the world. The field does not exist in the brain. The brain exists in the field. The body is a resonance chamber of that field, a node of knowing, a note in the cosmic chord.
From Concept to Experience
This is where theory turns to practice. Because if you are not a bystander to this field—but an active note within it—then how you vibrate matters. Your state of being is not private. Your coherence, your presence, your resonance—they ripple outward in ways science is only beginning to understand.
Practices like chanting, breathwork, and sound meditation aren’t just spiritual exercises. They are re-tunings of the instrument. They restore coherence between the personal wave and the universal field.
When you chant “OM” or “HU,” you are not just making a sound.
You are remembering the frequency of origin.
You are singing yourself back into alignment.
And this is precisely what my book Good Vibrations: The Primordial Sounds of Existence explores. It is not a book of techniques. It is a gateway into the living mystery of vibration itself. A guided inquiry into how sacred sound can awaken not belief, but direct experience.
The Diamond Approach and the Four Turnings of the Wheel
The Diamond Approach, a modern path of realization developed by A.H. Almaas, offers a profound framework for understanding consciousness through what it calls the Four Turnings of the Wheel. These four turnings beautifully map onto the layers we’ve just explored—from light and vibration, to unilocality and the field of knowing.
- First Turning – Self-Discovery: You discover the essence beneath the personality—your actual being. Here, light is personal. You experience presence as joy, will, and compassion. This resonates with the brain as a receiver of essential qualities, each one a frequency of being.
- Second Turning – Nonduality: You realize that essence is not yours alone. Being is everywhere. Light is not local to the self—it is universal. This aligns with nonlocality and the recognition that consciousness permeates all of existence.
- Third Turning – Totality: You begin to embrace paradox and multiplicity. Duality and nonduality coexist. Personal and impersonal, form and formless, all appear as expressions of one radiant field. This turning echoes the quantum model: wave and particle, mind and matter, sound and silence—not either/or but both/and.
- Fourth Turning – The View of Total Being: This is the culmination: not a realization you land in, but a dynamic unfolding of truth. It is the living field that thinks, vibrates, and appears. Here, vibration is not symbolic. It is the creative pulse of Total Being, and you are its song. Unilocality becomes not just a theory but a lived intimacy with the moment as origin.
These turnings aren’t steps you climb. They are depths you inhabit. Just as quantum entanglement hints at one field, and sacred sound points to one origin, the Four Turnings offer a map through which the field awakens to itself—in you.
The Third Turning and the Realization of Unilocality
While all Four Turnings offer unique dimensions of realization, the Third Turning—Totality—carries a direct and profound resonance with the notion of unilocality.
In this stage, the path no longer privileges one view over another. Emptiness and form, self and no-self, relative and absolute, even duality and nonduality—all are seen as co-emergent expressions of one indivisible reality. This is not a conceptual synthesis but a felt unity: all things appear in the exact ontological location. Not connected across space, but arising from one seamless field.
This is unilocality as realization: the undeniable knowing that everything is happening here. The tree across the street, the breath in your chest, the memory of a lost love, the thought arising now—not distant objects in a vast cosmos, but immediate appearances in the single field of Being.
In this view, even the brain and its light emissions are not “in” the body. The body, the photons, the thought—they all appear together in the one field. The One Light. The One Event.
Unilocality, then, is not just a quantum possibility or a mystical metaphor. It is a realized intimacy—the third turning of the wheel, where Total Being includes all perspectives without separation.
Not “this, not that.”
Not “this or that.”
But this as that, arising in the same shimmering ground.
Final Note
If quantum entanglement is real in the brain—and if biphotons are dancing through your myelin sheaths as you read this—then perhaps you are not reading a screen at all.
Perhaps the field is speaking to itself.
Perhaps you are a question mark vibrating in a sea of radiant answers.
Perhaps all that remains is to tune.
Read the article. Follow the science. Then listen for the sound underneath it all.
And if you want to go deeper into the resonance at the root of your being, explore Good Vibrations.
It might not answer the questions you have.
But it will vibrate the questions that answer you.
John Harper is a Diamond Approach® teacher, Enneagram guide, and a student of human development whose work bridges psychology, spirituality, and deep experiential inquiry. He is the author of The Enneagram World of the Child: Nurturing Resilience and Self-Compassion in Early Life and Good Vibrations: Primordial Sounds of Existence, available on Amazon.