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Brian Swimme is a mathematical cosmologist I have quoted several times in this blog. In a TV series called ‘The Sacred Balance‘, he explains how the new understanding of the universe modern science has given us can help us relate in a profound and meaningful manner to nature and more specifically in these three following quotes, to the sun.

One of the gifts of science is in understanding that life exists by drawing in the sun; one of the gifts of science is to realize that what is surging through us in every moment of our life, with every breath we take, is the sun. So in a real sense the human is the human form of a solar flare. It is surging into the life of the Earth, and in all beings, in the fish, in the mammals, and in the human we have another form of the energy that first was captured by the early photosynthetic organisms. We are the sun in a new form.

He further speaks about the process of inner transformation and self sacrifice on the part of the sun which he qualifies as an act of ‘cosmic generosity’. This unconditional and incessant pouring of energy is what enables all life forms including us human beings to live on this Earth, from a distance of some 93 million miles.

Ninety-three million miles the light has to come, and already we’re being warmed up by it. You know, if it weren’t for the sun, the entire Earth would be 400 degrees below zero. It just constantly pours out all of that light, and what’s amazing is to think about the sun being a million times as huge as the Earth. It’s just this vast fire that enables all of life to take place here. And what I really find fascinating is the way in which the sun produces this light. Right at the core it’s transforming hydrogen into helium. And in that transformation it’s converting some of its mass into energy. Every second, four million tons of the sun is being transformed into this light. That’s like a million elephants. So there’s another million elephants, another million elephants, and if it weren’t for that ongoing bestowal of energy, we wouldn’t have any life on earth. So one way to think about the sun, every time you see it at dawn, is to think of it as an act of cosmic generosity. It’s this vast giveaway of energy that enables us to survive, enables all of life to thrive. So we are surfing around the source of ongoing cosmic generosity.

Brian Swimme then says in this last quote how he greets every morning the sun. This passage cannot but remind me how his relating to the sun is close to the vision of Vedic seers or rishis who invited us a few thousands of years ago to appreciate the presence of one Intelligence and Power manifest in the universe in the form of the sun, the moon, the stars, the planets, etc. and which makes them what they are. In other words, just like a wave is connected to the ocean from which it is born, is sustained by and goes back to, our connection as an individual to the sun, and therefore to the cause of the universe, is so fundamental that we need to appreciate and understand it as it is. Because it is a reality of our living as a human being in this universe which cannot be ignored or bypassed.

I greet the sun each morning just by reflecting for just a moment on the vastness of the sun, a million times the size of the Earth, in bestowing all this energy. And just in that moment, I remember that we are spinning around the star, and it’s because of the star’s energy that we exist. So that we are this star in a new form. And by doing that I remember my cosmological dimension. And it puts everything in perspective for the whole day.