The intelligence of the human mind is truly astounding. It's more remarkable than we have remarks for.

How did we become so intelligent? Light reflected.

Most animals can see light and they move about their environment with purpose based on what they see. Without light or when blinded by a blanket, many creatures will not move.

Without natural or artificial light, humans don't get around well, either.

With light, we see our environment and can decide how to proceed. So, what is it that we see with light? Knowledge.

With light, we don't see so much as we learn. If a tree falls in the forest and there is no light to see it, does it fall?

We see a tree only because sunlight is reflecting off that tree and reaching our eyes which are limited to seeing a specific range within the light spectrum. That same tree would look very different if we could see more of the light spectrum, like ultraviolet or infrared.

The same is true for celestial explorers. They don't go out to learn about the universe, they learn from the light that comes in, reflected off mirrors, passed through lenses and processed on computers. Astronomers study light as it travels through space & time to discover more about the cosmos and its beginnings.

From the Big Bang to stars that collapse into Black Holes and consume light, to galactic clusters, to pulsars with jetting light beams, to the brightest known object in the universe—a glowing core of a galaxy called a quasar, scientists learn about our universe primarily from light.

Without light, there's little to learn about our universe. Like dark matter—if light doesn't affect it, we won't learn much about it.

For whatever we read, we need light; books, screens, store displays, public advertising, billboards, skywriting and more. Typically, words are displayed on a contrasting background and our eyes quickly process the light and dark areas to recognize the characters of a language along with various shapes. Images and video in those displays require light too.

The words take time to learn, but the processing of the words in our brain is as instantaneous as light. No light means nothing to process.

Stars provide light to the entire universe and our sun is a medium-sized star. Humans process massive amounts of information from sunlight. It reflects off of everything that we look at and those reflections are what our eyes process so that we can learn and grow.

When sunlight reflects, it doesn't always reflect all of its light spectrum. That's why we see colours. Different objects reflect and absorb select parts of the light spectrum and we don't see what is absorbed but see what is reflected. The tree trunk reflects subtle shades of brown but absorbs all other colours.

This is likely our best method to gather information about our environment and the universe. Of course, we hear, taste, smell and feel to learn from our environment as well, but they provide information not reliant on light.

For both humans and computers, 2D/3D visuals and video require much more processing power than text, audio or still pictures. Our brains require more neurons to process these two & three-dimensional moving images than for sounds, smells, tastes and bodily sensations or feelings.

Interestingly, while light travels faster than sound in our environment, sound is processed faster than light in our brains. This is probably ingrained for protection against unexpected attacks. We hear sounds from 360 degrees around us, but we can only see what's in front of us.

We are exquisitely designed to learn from light and to enlighten others as we pass on what we've learned.

The light came into the world and it was good for intelligence, movement, hunting/gathering/shopping for food and our protection.

The light that enlightens our universe also enlightens our minds as we reflect on it.

God's light teaches us as well and teaches us even better.

We reflect the Light of God best when we learn to love others as He loves us.