Thoughts

For several years mysterious light reflections have been appearing in windows and on walls all over the world. When I first read about this phenomenon and saw some photographs, I remember I reacted quite sceptically and irritated. As far as I was concerned, they were ordinary light reflections from one window onto the building across the street. But as I got more knowledge of this phenomenon, my scepticism started crumbling. Especially when I saw them with my own eyes...

The light circles were first seen and documented in 1988. Ever since they appear all over the world. At the moment more than 100,000 cases have been documented in, for instance, the USA, Canada, the UK, Scotland, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia and Argentina.

There are several characteristics that account for my initial scepticism:

The figures only appear when the sun shines on a window and is reflected onto an opposite building. Naturally the sun is needed; sunlight reflections simply cannot occur when it's overcast...
In some locations they only appear in springtime, whereas in other locations one can only find them in yet another season. In other words, it's season-bound. Of course, bearing in mind the position (height) of the sun and the distance from the window to the opposite wall. Since that distance doesn't change, only the position of the sun can play a role and thus the season.

However... as I dived deeper into the subject, more facts came to the surface that confused my reason...

Characteristics of the light circles that caused my scepticism to crumble:

According to the residents, some figures simply appeared all of a sudden. One day they were there... The windows had not been replaced, no factor that could play a role in this phenomenon had been changed.
According to the residents, some figures simply disappeared all of a sudden, without an obvious cause.
In the beginning there were only certain basic shapes: a circle containing an X, a circle containing an 8, and two overlapping circles (Vesica Pisces). But the number of shapes has been extended quite a bit and there now even appear entire crosses of light surrounded by beautiful auras.
Several cases have been documented of sudden appearances of light circles for people who had felt a strong desire to see one.

Since I felt kind of confused due to the above mentioned facts, I decided first of all that I wanted to see the light circles with my own eyes, and secondly I wanted to hear the glass experts' opinions...

After some internet searching I drove to Utrecht (in the centre of my small country) with an address list. After two days of driving around and talking with residents, it was clear that four out of five addresses dropped out. I had come in the wrong season. The sun was too high in the sky which caused the opposite buildings to be too far away to be able to catch the reflected sunlight. I would have to return later, probably in January...

However, the final address was a hit! Close to the railway station, at the corner of Daalse Boulevard and Knip Street, I found what I'd been looking for! The sun shone straight into the windows of the ING Bank building and was reflected onto a large blind wall of the competitor: the ABN-AMRO Bank. I have to be honest here: it truly did something to me. I sensed a deep feeling of awe and joy. I got all hot and started to glow; somehow I felt I was witnessing something really special... This surprised me; after all, I was simply watching some ordinary sunlight reflections, right? So how come my body reacted so weird?

After having taken several photographs, I walked to the left side of the ING Bank, where the sun was reflected in the same kind of modern, tinted windows. To my surprise, those reflections were very ordinary...

I spent the rest of the day driving through the streets of Utrecht, looking at all sorts of reflections. The difference was striking. I watched and photographed many types of windows: old, new, modern, smooth, undulating, clear, tinted. The reflections were all simple and predictable. They did not resemble those of the bank buildings, not even close...

Back home, my confusion had not crumbled, so I decided to call some glass and window experts. Their unanimous comment was clear: in order to get such straight and clear reflections, the glass had to be severely bent, with a difference of at least several millimeters. This is not normal and should not occur during the production process. It would cause tremendous tension on the glass surface, causing it to break easily. Furthermore glass is never totally smooth or straight, not even modern glass. There is always some sort of random undulation in its surface. Due to this undulation it is impossible to create straight and clear-cut reflections as we see in the case of the light circles. Apart from all of this, the coherence length of sunlight (1 micrometer) makes it impossible for those clear reflections to occur on that scale and such a distance.

In other words: according to glass experts light circles cannot possibly be explained by the laws of physics as we know them.

I cannot say this caused my confusion to disappear. I can however state that my scepticism was washed away when I took a shower that night...

By now I have read numerous reports about the light circles from all over the world. In all cases the witnesses stated they were deeply touched. I can't help sensing a link with the crop circles, that I have been researching for the last ten years:

Both crop circles and light circles appeared quite suddenly - that is in large numbers - by the end of the eighties.
Both are geometric shapes that were simple at first, but grew more and more complex as time went by.
Both cause a sense of wonder, awe and joy.
Both defy our laws of physics.

Where this is going to lead us, I truly don't know. I feel we are dealing with different phases of the same phenomenon: a phenomenon that pushes back our boundaries and wavers our fixed world view. This helps us develop an open mind, a stronger empathic ability and a higher level of tolerance towards other ideas and opinions. Not a bad thing in the world of today...