Everything is the Light: A Conversation with Nikola Tesla

Journalist: Mr. Tesla, you have earned the glory of one who seems to have touched the very heart of the cosmos.
May I ask—who are you?

Tesla: That is indeed the right question, Mr. Smith. And I will try to give you a truthful answer.

Journalist: Some say you come from a place in Croatia, a region called Lika, where the people grow alongside trees, rocks, and a sky full of stars. They say your village is named after wildflowers, that your birthplace rests between a forest and a church.

Tesla: It’s all true. I am proud of my Serbian roots and my Croatian homeland. My soul belongs to both.

Journalist: Visionaries claim that the 20th and 21st centuries were born in the mind of Nikola Tesla. They speak of rotating magnetic fields, sing hymns to your induction motor. They call you the hunter who trapped light in a net drawn from the earth's depths, the warrior who captured fire from the heavens.

They say: the father of alternating current made physics and chemistry rule the modern world. Industry reveres you as its prophet. Philanthropists call you the finest of benefactors. They say in your lab, the atom was first undone, and a weapon that shakes the earth was born. They say you discovered black rays from the cosmos.

That in the temple of the future, five races will honor your name—because you taught them that the elements of Empedocles can be bathed in light, drawn from the ether.

Are these things true?

Tesla: Yes, these are some of my discoveries. But I am a defeated man.

Journalist: Defeated? But why, Mr. Tesla?

Tesla: Because I have not accomplished the greatest work I dreamed of.

Journalist: What work is that?

Tesla: I wanted to illuminate the entire Earth.

There is enough energy to create a second sun—a halo of light around our planet, like the ring of Saturn. But mankind is not yet ready for the good, nor for the great.

In Colorado Springs, I infused the Earth with electricity. I saw the planet tremble with light. I heard the rhythm of her heart. But the world was not ready to receive such a gift. I wished to give power freely, drawn from the sky and the soil. But power fears freedom.

Journalist: Some physicists—like Einstein—have discarded the idea of the ether. They say space is empty. Do you disagree?

Tesla: The ether is real. It is the breath of the universe, the subtle fire that connects all things. Einstein sees a clockwork cosmos; I see a living one. Space is not empty—it sings with invisible currents. That is where the true force lies.

Journalist: And light?

Tesla: Everything is the light.

All matter is light at rest. Light is both sound and form, spirit and substance. When we understand the power of light—how to receive it, direct it, and live with it—we will have unlocked the secret of the stars, and the soul.