When I think of gravity, images come to mind of Isaac Newton resting under a tree while an apple falls from the branch above, symbolically containing the inspiration for the law of gravity. Newton, of course, is considered one of the pillars of the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason.

Newton, together with his forerunners, including Copernicus, Galileo, and Descartes, and contemporaries such as Locke and Spinoza—among many more leading scientists and philosophers of this renaissance of thought—stood on the threshold of an awakening power of the mind that would reshape the Western world. European society underwent a shattering transformation as the result of this flood of reasoning, a reaction to both the superstition and the mystical mindset fostered by the medieval church.

The Renaissance signaled the dawning of a new age, one that would reshape even the celestial myths about the nature of God. If the systems of heaven were orderly, if the earth indeed revolved around the sun, if laws such as gravity governed all falling objects in some kind of universal harmony, then God, too, must be a logical Being. Reason was the power to strive for, the ultimate inner quality of the human being.

All material things have a symbolic counterpart in the archetypal realm that imbues each physical object or force with meaning. Another way to say this is that the law of cause and effect operates on many levels other than the physical. Emotional and psychic forces, for instance, also have causes and effects.

In the realm of mystical law, however, although the law of cause and effect functions just as reliably as it does in the realm of natural law, it is far more porous, or open to influences that do not exist in the same way within the physical realm. Grace and prayer, for example, have the power to influence the dynamics of the laws within the mystical realm. Some mystics have been able, in effect, to “defy gravity” as a result of their knowledge of and trust in the authority of mystical law.

To understand how the laws of the universe, including the law of gravity, can function in symbolic ways requires us to train our minds to perceive beyond the limitations of reason and logic. First, we need to understand the word gravity through its other meanings, such as “seriousness” or “heaviness.” Symbolically, we might say that Newton discovered the law of seriousness, the law of the relationship between reason and the symbolic “weight of thought,” along with the conventional law of gravity.

Certainly it can be said that Newton made a scientific discovery in identifying the law of gravity, but from another and far more intriguing perspective, the case can be made that Newton had a mystical experience in which he was given a glimpse into the essential oneness of the universe. He saw through the veil of ordinary sight this one day of his life to comprehend the functioning of but one of the physical laws—which he named the law of gravity—which reflects the constant mystical truth that “What is in one is in the whole.”

He saw “into the whole” on that one day in his life and noted that all things are subject to one law, related to weight and force. That he applied his mystical insight to science is just part of his task, but the mystical consequence was that energetic weight—psychic weight—began transferring more “seriously” into thought as well as science grew more and more into prominence, eclipsing the value of emotional and intuitive knowledge.

We must, it seems, shift to yet another realm of perception, a realm that is beyond conventional reason, in order to maneuver through the problems facing us. We must learn to think as the mystics did. We must learn to defy gravity. This requires developing our intellectual and creative resources as well as our capacity to perceive the world through the power of our soul. In this way, what is impossible in the physical world of reason and logic becomes completely possible in our world of grace, mystical laws, prayer, and divine companionship.

It is in our nature to defy gravity, to transcend the limitations of the reasoning mind and connect with an inner realm of mystical truth. We have always been on the quest for this truth; we have always been seeking a way to defy the laws that weigh us down in ordinary thought. From a Renaissance of the mind, we are now coming full circle to a mystical Renaissance. It’s time to learn the truths that govern our interior soul.