The Inner Light and World Religions: How Meditating Mystics Use Sleep as a Ladder to Trigger Ecstatic Visions

Nicholson, Philip T.: - Philip Taylor Nicholson, a professional medical writer, studied philosophy at Princeton, law and psychiatry at Stanford Law School, and health education at the Harvard School of Public Health. During the Vietnam War, he was assigned to Air Force Headquarters in the Pentagon where he was the legal representative on a Social Actions Mobile Assistance Team tasked with traveling worldwide to consult with local base commanders about changes in policies relating to race relations and drug abuse. After discharge, Nicholson and his wife moved to Boston and he began working as a professional medical writer producing scripts for videos about new scientific discoveries that were used in the continuing education of physicians and other medical professionals. His interest in meditation-induced light visions began one night when he inadvertently triggered a progression of light visions that paralleled the light visions sequences described in the ancient mystical literatures of India, China, and Tibet. Fascinated by this unexpected and extraordinary experience, Nicholson began a program of research to determine what would have to happen in a human brain to generate this light vision sequence. He also studied how these light visions have been incorporated as important symbols in most of the world's major religions.