Why does a total eclipse excite us so?

I got a total eclipse flashback high watching live TV on Monday, recalling my cosmic eclipse trips to Hungary 1999 and Zambia 2001, both of which played key parts in the genesis of my book, Sun of gOd. TV coverage also showed the degree of wondrous awe that this event brings to viewers, whether newbies or seasoned “eclipse addicts.”

Nobody seemed to question the why of this response. The answer would involve realising that all those ancient cultures were right about something the Abrahamic religions got wrong. The Sun that makes life possible for life on Earth knows life itself. It’s not a random ball of gas that just happens to facilitate life, but the star of the creation process that enables life on Earth – and everything else in this family of planets. Respect.

So what do we witness in a total eclipse? We see the corona – a normally invisible energy field that occupies more space than Sun itself. Solar scientists believe it creates and controls sunspots, solar flares, coronal mass ejections and prominences – while calling it Sun’s greatest mystery. Our own minds are an invisible energy field that is seen as the greatest mystery of human existence. Minds control some of what our bodies do, but not a lot.

Whether they knew it or not, those scientists, regular people and media reporters were all getting a spiritual buzz from witnessing the mind of our local star, a character our distant ancestors saw as divine and deserving of gratitude. Across America this gratitude unconsciously came out in the whooping and shouting and ecstatic awe of those who had congregated for the shared experience. Perhaps some enlightenment was gained in the process.

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Intrigued by this idea and want to see where it leads? Check out my book, Sun of gOd, with a Foreword by Graham Hancock. It’s the only one out there.

Editor’s Pick – my letter to New Scientist

I must have sent variations on this letter to the New Scientist five times or more since my book, Sun of gOd, was published. Sure, they might tag me as a nutcase but I saw that as a risk worth taking, and being tagged nutcase has never stopped me in the past.

An article in New Scientist on atheism as a faith, related only to the Abrahamic alternatives, moved me to write them once again. Whoop whoop – after major cutting, they published my letter last week as the Editor’s Pick! I earnestly hope it will plant the seed of stellar consciousness in a few scientific minds.

My long-winded original is underneath. New Scientist did a brilliant edit, but I like to think the redacted content is what finally cut through their built-in rejection reflex. Perseverance furthers.

The Original – Dear New Scientist,

Someone from another planet reading “Faith of the Faithless” (15^th April) might easily think the three Abrahamic religions and atheism are the only belief systems on the planet. Buddhists and Taoists do well without any creator god while Hindus can attribute spirit to just about anything. Zoroastrians revere light and its emissaries, Sun and fire. Shinto worship a female Sun goddess.

The most worshiped deity in human history, and one that even atheists can recognise  is entirely omitted from the article.  Our local star actually IS the light of our life and it is NOT a delusion. The more that cosmologists study Sun and other stars the harder it becomes to explain their behaviour as random balls of plasma entirely directed by the laws of physics. How to explain Sun’s corona or the “magnetic portal” connecting it to Earth, discovered by NASA in 2008? How to explain the movement of stars in a galaxy?

As Carl Sagan put it, “Our ancestors worshiped the Sun, and they were far from foolish…. If we must worship a power greater than ourselves, does it not make sense to revere the Sun and stars?” It was not science that burned all thought of a living Sun from our culture but the Church, and scientists maintain this religious taboo out of habit, not the scientific method. When science lets go of that old Christian imprint perhaps we will, mercifully, be able to consign dark matter to the same dustbin as the luminiferous ether.

Yours,  Gregory Sams

Forward by            Graham Hancock

Thank you Sun, you’re a star

I was indulging in some late afternoon Sun-gazing a while ago and shot this two minute tribute on my iPhone. My friend James Light then did some stellar work with the imagery and it’s turned out very well.

                           click    The Setting Sun

Enjoy.

Shine on,
Gregory