Directly Experiencing the
Whirling Solar System
Most
of us watching a sunset have an experience similar to what medieval
people experienced when they watched a sunset, which was the same as
what people in the classical civilizations experienced, as well as those
back still further, in the Neolithic and Paleolithic eras.
In fact, this common experience of sunset is just what any
primate would have experienced anytime since the very beginning of
primate life, seventy million years ago.
We all watch the Sun push down and then drop below the dark,
unmoving horizon. If asked afterward what we were doing, we say, "I
was watching the Sun go down." But if asked to explain what
happened, we say, "Well, you know, the Earth is spinning so it just
appears as if the Sun is going down."
But
the fact that the Earth moves around the Sun can be appreciated
directly.
In
order to move from ordinary consciousness to a new kind of planetary
wisdom, we need a transformation of our experience that takes place
concurrently with our acquisition of knowledge.
It is not enough simply to learn more facts and knowledge about
the universe. Something
much deeper and more difficult is necessary.
This new challenge is difficult precisely because of the
counter-intuitive nature of scientific discoveries.
Science arrives at truths that are not part of our genetic
inheritance, and thus they often appear strange and unnatural.
But so long as such truths are left to dangle outside as
abstractions, we are condemned to live a split life.
What
is needed here is a transformative process where one can learn to see
and to feel the world in a way congruent with what is actually
happening. Such a
transformation would enable one to transcend the split modern condition
of experiencing the world one way, while knowing the truth of the world
is otherwise.
I
do not know of any science department in the American system of higher
education where a change of perception is a primary aim of the
curriculum. Our focus of
course has been dominated by the central task of accumulating and
producing knowledge. Learning
to actually experience a dynamic evolving universe does occur, but
always in a haphazard manner as a by-product of the primary focus.
What I am suggesting is that such a transformation of one's
subjectivity might become an explicit goal in the next millennium.
Visualization 1 – Sunset and Sunrise
In
order to take a beginning step in this regard, I'd like to focus on this
one particular experience of a sunset.
Any person who wishes to can transform her perceptual habits and
can learn to see, in a direct experiential way, the Earth rotating away
from the Sun. The simplest
way to accomplish this is to go out half an hour before
"sunset" at a time when Venus is low on the horizon.
It is helpful if another planet is also visible, such as Jupiter
or Mars, but that is not necessary.
A last ingredient for this process is a child.
If you can manage to bring along a child, she will probably get
there first, and her glow of discovery will assist you in making your
own advance.
Begin by focusing your attention on Venus,
and as you do so, keep the model of the solar system in mind as a way of
organizing your experience. What needs to be kept in mind is the simple
fact that we are dealing with great distances, and that - concerning the
three planets - Venus is closest to the Sun, then Earth, then Jupiter,
and all three move in a plane about the Sun.
Simply
by focusing on the experience and viewing it through the theoretical model
of the solar system's form, there comes a wonderful moment when you enter
into it all at once: you feel in an experiential, imaginative, and direct
way the Earth slowly turning away from the Sun.
You have a sense of the plane in which the planets move, and even a
beginning recognition of the great distance to Venus. You will also
feel, and perhaps for the first time in your life, the immensity of the
Earth as it rolls away from the great Sun.
It happens in a flash. A
single surprising shudder passes through you and you realize you are
standing on the back of something like a cosmic whale, one that is slowly
rotating its great bulk on the surface of an unseen ocean.
It
is true that, soon afterward, we snap right back into our everyday way of
experiencing the world. But
if even for a moment you enter this larger experience of the world, you
will be able to enter it again more easily in the future.
The primary gateways are dawn and dusk, but as you grow in
competence you can learn to experience yourself on the whirling Earth amid
the enveloping solar system at any time and at any place.
In each such moment you remain of course an individual person on
the planet but you become as well a living planet encircling a star.
Visualization 2 – Earth Swinging Around the Sun
As
you learn to feel directly the immensity of the Earth rotating away from
the Sun, you can then take the further step of feeling the Earth swinging
around the Sun.
Though
we say, "The Earth revolves around the Sun," the truth is
slightly different. The Sun
is also moving, though not as much as the Earth is moving.
An image that can help fix this in mind is that of the hammer throw
in Olympic competition. Here
a person swings a hammer around and around and then flings it through the
air. A careful examination of
the movement would show that the human is not at the fixed center of the
spinning motion but that the human and the disk both revolve about their
common center of gravity. The
human doesn't move in as big a circle as the hammer because the human
weighs much more than the hammer; and in a similar way, the Sun does not
move anywhere near as much as the Earth, because the Sun is so much
heavier. Nevertheless, the
Sun does move in a tiny circle as both the Sun and Earth revolve about
their common center of gravity.
If,
again at dawn or dusk, you contemplate the same setting, with Venus in
the sky and a child at your side, you can get your first real taste of
the Earth's movement around the Sun and the Sun's tiny wobble in
response. One additional fact will aid your contemplation here.
The size of the Sun is approximately a million times the size of
the Earth. Thus, if you
start your contemplation with a sense of Earth's immensity, and you now
imagine that hot bright being on the horizon as containing a million
earths, you can begin to feel the way in which the massiveness of the
Sun whips the Earth and all the other planets through their annual arcs.
The
crucial step here is to awaken to the fact of the Sun's gravitational
power. The Earth is one
immense planet, and it is being whipped around the Sun by the power of the
Sun. This is something the
Sun is doing in every instant of every day.
We are held by the Sun. If
the Sun released us from our bond with it, we would sail off into deep
space.
As
before, a new awareness will come in a sudden shift where a door opens and
you feel yourself sliding into an unsuspected and disorienting awareness.
It is disorienting not in the sense of an irritated confusion - for
the experience is not at all irritating but on the contrary is usually
breathtaking; it is disorienting in the sense of a bottom dropping away,
as if for the first time in your life you have closed your eyes and leapt
into a body of cool water and are suddenly turning about weightless
without toes or fingers touching any ground.
Words
are pathetically inadequate to convey this cosmological experience.
Modern English as a living language was created over the last five
centuries by humans who did not have this particular experience, so how
likely is it that English would contain the verbs, adjectives, metaphors,
and images necessary to convey it? There
is no linguistic formulation that would make unnecessary your direct
contact here. To fully understand, one has to sit down and wait for the
universe to enter.
To
contemplate the solar system until you feel the great Earth turning away
from the Sun and until you feel this immense planet being swung around its
massive cosmic partner is to touch an ocean of wonder as you take a first
step into inhabiting the actual universe and solar system and Earth.
Of
course, all of this is very flimsy. This
new cosmological orientation, even if deeply felt, will soon crumble as we
are buffeted back into the nihilistic materialism dominant in our society.
That's just where we find ourselves today, and we have to start
somewhere. For our lives today, our tasting of the universe will be
sporadic and brief. But even
if such encounters as I've described are ephemeral, they will nevertheless
enable you to experience your self and your world, perhaps for the first
time in your life, as soaring around a star that floats in the vast ocean
of the cosmos.
Visualization 3 – Looking Down On The Milky Way
If
you’ve never had an experience of a galaxy, you have before you one of
the great opportunities in the universe.
All that is needed is to journey forty or fifty miles to get out
from under the urban pollution. If
you live in the country, even better, for you are already there.
Go with some friends, take a couple of blankets, a thermos or two,
and as soon as it's dark lie on your back and behold that path of milky
light that runs from one horizon clear through the great vault of heavens
all the way down to the opposite side of the world.
This is the Milky Way Galaxy, our home. From every place on the
planet, and from every period of history, humans have entered awe while
contemplating this great light that encircles the world.
Imagine
the Earth floating in space, and instead of picturing your own place on
the "top" part of Earth, arrange the picture in your mind so
that you are on the "bottom" of this visualized Earth.
Now,
as you lie there, imagine yourself peering down into the great chasm of
the night sky. If your
imagination is strong enough you can enter quickly into a new experience.
Otherwise it might take some time, but the moment will come, in a
rapid reorganization of phenomena, when all those stars will be
experienced as down below, far, far below, and the amazing feeling
accompanying this experience is a sense of surprise that you are not
falling down there to join them. But
of course you don't fall. You
hover in space, gazing down into the vault of stars, suspended there in
your bond with Earth.
Earth's
gravitational power holds you, and you feel the strength of this bond in
the pressure felt in your shoulders and along your back and buttocks and
legs. We normally think of
this pressure as coming from our "weight" but, in a strictly
scientific sense, no being has any intrinsic weight.
Rather, all bodies are capable of entering into gravitational
interactions; and for us, the dominant gravitational interaction we
experience is with Earth. It's
the Earth's hold that keeps us suspended above the stars.
As
you lie there feeling yourself hovering within this gravitational bond
while peering down at the billions of stars drifting in the infinite chasm
of space, you will have entered an experience of the universe that is not
just human and not just biological. You
will have entered a relationship from a galactic perspective, becoming for
a moment a part of the Milky Way Galaxy experiencing what it’s like to
be the Milky Way Galaxy.
Source:
Adapted from - Swimme, B. (1996) The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos.
New York:
Orbis Books
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