The Sun's The Same Size as The Moon in the Sky

by Sand Sheff

 

            The sun’s the same size as the moon in the sky.

What exactly happens during a total solar eclipse? Is it explainable only by difficult scientific equations? Is it an optical illusion? What happens when day turns to night in those rare moments of a total solar eclipse?

The moon just passes in front of the sun. They line up perfectly and the moon blocks out the sun, leaving just a pale blue corona. 
          

Technically, you could say sun and moon have the same “angular diameter”, in this case approximately half a degree. The most extraordinary of all “coincidences” makes it possible. The sun is simultaneously 400 times bigger than the moon and 400 times farther away from earth. That is the sum total of the science required to understand this. You can experiment yourself with a marble and a basketball. I’m not sure how many steps you’ll need to take, but at some point the marble will be the same size. We can google all this for confirmation if we want. Or we can just look up.

            True, it’s tough to look at the sun. It’s so bright it will burn out your eyes.  But on those days when there’s just the right kind of clouds moving through the sky, you can briefly glance up and catch a glimpse of how big the sun really is in the sky.  It’s the same as the moon.

            Of course, so few of us look up anymore. That’s because a strange little machine appeared in our hands, saying “look at me, look at me.” Those little machines are connected to a very big machine-a brand new reality that isn’t real. That new reality probably  doesn’t much care that the moon is the same size as the sun in the sky. This is part of our riddle too.

             

            

Still, no matter what, the sun’s the same size as the moon in the sky. This is true.

            

Now, does that matter? That depends. Simply put, it is how you see this proof, this grandest of “coincidences”, that matters. It’s not what any so-called “experts”, or your teachers or preachers or friends or even your families think. It is whether or not you attach significance to this fundamental reality that may help you learn something about yourself and the universe.

           

The sun and moon's apparent size are the first and greatest of signs, the one that cannot be refuted. It’s not a “religious” idea. It’s not even an idea. It’s reality. It is a foundation of universal truth that allows each person to decide its significance for themselves. But it’s not like saying the “sky is blue” or the “world goes round” or “ice is cold” or other banalities. Sun and moon are different than these observations. The “coincidence” of symmetry involved requires the conjunction of three very different spheres. Its truth demands something more from the human mind than the usual basic information does. This truth seeks decision from the soul.

            

Sun and moon are and will always remain a perpetual reminder that we are perfectly perched on a living stage. We have a very unique view of a universe clearly created to be perceived by intelligent beings. It is a very big deal to reckon this concept. It is likewise a big deal to offhandedly dismiss it as coincidence. It is a tremendous personal choice to either approach or retreat from this idea. For if there is a stage then there is a story. If there is indeed a story to our existence…well then that, of course, implies many things.

 

            

The truth of sun and moon has been established in such a way that every person on the planet can observe it. It is as real to the child in the slums of Calcutta as to the billionaire on his yacht in the Caribbean. It’s likely as real to horses and lions and dolphins. There is a steady backdrop for our stage, and all our busy doings.

             It turns out that there is a truth. It is a place where physical meets spiritual, where science meets poetry, where Creator meets created.

             It is not like this on other planets, just as earth is not like other planets. Those who deny significance in this truth claim sun and moon are not a sign of any "design" because they aren’t always exactly the same size all the time. Of course, the moon and earth fluctuate a little in orbit so sun and moon aren’t always exactly the same—sometimes they are a few percentage points off…but still, basically that’s part of the riddle too. The poetic works of nature have symmetry, but rarely the hard symmetry preferable to human engineers.

            

During a solar eclipse, when the moon passes in front of the sun, the alignment is often 99.7% to 100 % exact, leaving a perfect corona, allowing sunlight to only shine through valleys between craters on the moon’s horizon.

            

There is no place yet discovered in the solar system or universe that has anything close to this arrangement in any significant sense. Sure, there might be a spot on Jupiter where you could float your lawn chair on a methane cloud and briefly view one of 27 satellites eclipse the tiny star that passes for a sun out there. But who cares? It is a parody of an eclipse both in its visual insignificance and because there’s no one there. What happens on earth is plainly amazing. We have perfect and profound eclipses featuring large disks positioned to create the ultimate cosmic phenomenon for a planet blessed with intelligent life.

            

The sun could have just as easily been 215 times bigger and 321 times further away. Why would we be so configured? There is no scientific reason for their positions, but this arrangement allows for the existence of the very same life that beholds it. If sun and moon were not positioned as they are, we could not survive. It would be too hot or too cold. There would not be enough tidal force to stir the sea. All of it is perfect.

            

Sun and moon are not scientific phenomenon. They are an aspect of reality. It is the significance you place on this reality that matters. You will be neither “good” nor “bad” either way. Still, one achieves nothing by denying the significance, but perhaps gains something by accepting it.

            

Scientists tell us that this particularly perfect arrangement of sun and moon has only been so precise in the last several million years. In earlier epochs, they say the moon was closer and has been gradually drifting further away until it reached its present position. If this is the case, then it so happens that civilization arose at the same geologic instant when the two most prominent and vital objects in our sky had aligned into identical apparent diameters.

            

There could be no greater signposts in collective human identity than sun and moon. They are unlike anything else in our reality, determining humanity’s sense of time, light, warmth. They make all life possible. They are the great lights, the perfect spheres. It just so happens that they are the same exact size in the sky. This, even though the sun is 93 million miles away and the moon is 240,000 miles away

            

The truth of sun and moon can be a hard thing to figure out on your own, because the sun’s so bright it will burn out your eyes. Everybody knows that. Be sure and tell the kids not to look at the sun too long. You need the right kind of cloud to pass over it, and even then you can only glance up for a second.

            

There is  a riddle in the physical natures of sun and moon. The sun is unimaginably huge and composed of living fire. The moon is small and dead, and only shines reflected light. That earth should be a testing ground between reality and appearances, between living light and reflected light, waking and dreaming, between life and death, seems written into our most essential cosmic reality. Our earthly story is mirrored in the sky. During a solar eclipse, a profound symbolic storyline of the triumph of light over darkness and death is performed on the stage of the sky.

            

As civilization grew ‘smarter”, some began to figure out equations of the distance of sun and moon. It is said that the Greek mathematician Eratosthenes conceived of the positioning and perhaps even conjectured the distances involved as early as the third century BC.

Still, the actual distances from earth and diameters of sun and moon were not fully confirmed until the 20^th century. Science uncovered secrets of the distances and motions of sun and moon, and these distances could have been seen as an extraordinary proof of a vast intelligence. Indeed, our perfect eclipses and the search to predict and comprehend them, was one of the compelling interests of early science. Still, few know or consider this most basic of truths.

            

It required intelligent, sentient beings with sensitive technology and mathematical skills to comprehend the magnitude of this physical arrangement. These beings were sustained on the only planet in the universe known to contain life, blessed with oxygen, water and a perfectly situated sun. Add to this miraculous predicament the thousands of  other “coincidences” without which life could not have occurred.

            

For instance, the unusually large size of our moon (in relation to earth) acts to balance the earth’s obliquity (or 23.5 degree tilt to the sun). This has stabilized the earth’s climate. More obviously, our large moon acts as a pre-emptive asteroid shield.

           

In the realm of physics it is well known that any slight variation on the various electric, gravitational, chemical and nuclear properties of the universe would have rendered life, or even matter as we know it, impossible.
            

Most stars are too big, too bright or too unstable to support life. Our sun is just right and earth’s position to that sun is just right. If the earth were moved closer to the sun, bodies of water would vaporize, and life would not be possible. If the earth were farther, its waters would freeze.

            

Perhaps most significant of all is the baffling presence of life itself and its astonishing variety. The mystery of the complexity of the human mind and its urge towards creation; the appreciation of beauty; the existence of music and emotions, especially love and mercy- all these have no genuine scientific explanation. Neither does the universal inclination towards spirituality.

            

There were also lots of other little “coincidences” that kept you and your ancestors alive. You know that.

            

The many coincidences and peculiarities that accompany our existence might seem to be taken  as a convincing argument there exists a spiritual foundation to our material realm. Indeed, this idea was apparently taken for granted among most scientists until the last century and a half. Bacon, Newton and Einstein, for instance, all believed in God.

            

These days, those that deny the idea of Deity and spirit typically say there is no proof for such spirit. This would not matter in the least if not for the fact that this same lack of belief appears to have become the dominant dogma held by the men who design the machines that control our future. Their rapidly expanding new universe of Transhumanism, virtual reality, sophisticated robotics and artificial intelligence offers a final and total rejection of the natural world.

            An amoral force (now centuries old) commonly called Modern Technology, now blatantly seeks to dominate and alter all aspects of nature, including the fundamental biological properties of the human race. Today we see it exponentially accelerating manifesting in the bizarre realms of brain/computer interfaces, robotics and synthetic life. Simultaneously, with the installation of the universal computer network, certain earthly powers have devised an ingenious system of total surveillance and control, bringing us to the doorstep of a world completely devoid of privacy and anonymity. The final touches are being put on this astonishing machine while billions of dollars are funneled towards the creation of an “artificial intelligence” which expressly imitates the powers we associate with God with mechanical “omniscience” and “omnipotence”. We can only presume it is intended to replace that God.  

            

We are living in the age of what I call ReTheism, the creation and attempted enthronement of a new god. The allure of this new god lies in its promises of power and its extraordinary proven ability to distract the human mind with artificial light and constant information. We are promised that we can be as gods in this new universe. Already in virtual reality, you can kill or make love with or pretend to be whomever you please. It is a quasi-spiritual promise with an old familiar ring, one that resonates from the story of the Garden of Eden.

 

Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Has God said, you shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:

But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, you shall not eat of it, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.

And the serpent said unto the woman, you shall not surely die:

For God knows that in the day you eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.  (Genesis 3)

           

This tale is perhaps the single most widely known story in the world. It so happens that the most widely recognized corporate symbol in the world is a fruit with a bite out of it. Only in a world that has been systematically robbed of its ability to assign meaning could one avoid making connections between humanity’s most common origin story and the promises of the computer age.

           

Such a world might have been thrown so off-balance that they are unable to realize that the sun and moon are the same size in the sky. Such a world might not realize how much could be at stake beneath that sky.   

           
Go ahead, google “autonomous robots”, “transhumanism”, “internet of things” and “Singularity”. Look at those things for 30 minutes on you tube and decide for yourself the direction we are headed. Then turn off your computer, go outside and look up.

           

And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years—Genesis 1:4

 

            

This is not some trite matter, but goes to the heart of the survival of the human race and its independent spirit.

            

Delusion in the face of an obvious threat is a classic symptom of brainwashing. It is likely that we’ve all been brainwashed to one extent or another.

            

These days, we have a cacophony of endless competing truths, a digital tower of Babel. Instead of a singular false truth, there appears no truth at all. This allows for the introduction of the great false truth—the one that resonates through the ages—that the personal ego is the center of the universe, and the world has been created to serve it.
           

These are difficult and vital riddles. Not everyone can digest them. One can always justify any falsity or any viewpoint, or just as often, lack of viewpoint. One can always postpone the assignment of meaning and significance. What is most common these days is an intentional lack of viewpoint, a celebration of ignorance, and a general disinterest in meaning. We are witnessing for the first time in the history of civilization a near complete abandonment of the idea of wisdom.

            We seek commonality within the machine, within its network, only to find ourselves more and more divided from each other and the reality we almost surely must hold onto if we wish to survive with our sanity intact. This process has been going on for at least a century, but has accelerated drastically with the computer age.

             Still, why does it matter?

            

It matters because the network is becoming a trap for both mind and soul, and this has eternal implications. We are involved in an extraordinary spiritual story, one manifested on a material stage. The nature of technology’s increasing demands on human dignity should not be blithely dismissed.

            

We do have free will. We help tell some great story with our own little stories. We are all vital to this story, no matter our social position. But the real story is not found inside the internet or the TV, those storytelling mediums/mechanisms which have come to define our relationship to truth..

            

Your spirit comes from an eternal, natural spirit-the same one that placed the sun and moon in the sky. That eternal spirit does not exist inside the computer network. I cannot prove that assertion using scientific logic, but it seems like pretty much a given.

            

You can phrase it how you like, but our real story probably has something to do with love, sacrifice, kindness, mercy, free will, etc…These are all spiritual gifts unexplainable by scientific logic. The alternate universe, the universe manufactured by technologists, is most distinguished by desire, violence and distraction. We need to compare universes and think about these things. Then we come to personal conclusions.

           This is a struggle between faiths. One belief is in the natural universe and the spiritual reality which that represents. One belief is in an alternate universe created by certain men with powerful tools.

            

The struggle between these two forces is really the only story left to tell. It is the collision of two realities, and is no more a coincidence than the positioning of the sun and the moon. This is just the way things are. I’m not talking about any people being bad. It’s not that crude. We are in this story together. Also, I hope you don’t feel you have to agree with me one hundred percent to see my point.

            T

he quest of man to obtain the powers of his Creator somehow ended up here.

           \

 What came first as a serpent ends up as a beast.

 

            

The truth of sun and moon is a lifeline to the real. We could offer it to our children as a source of strength in this strange time. We could say to them:

           

“See how the moon is the same size as the sun in the sky? The sun is really far away and big and the moon is much closer and smaller. But God set them like that so they would seem to be the same size. We even have perfect eclipses when the moon goes in front of the sun! It’s one way for us to always know that God’s real. God’s in charge of the whole universe.”

            

Or we could just hand the kids an i-pad and hope for the best. The choice is ours. We would have no choices at all were it not for the Spirit that created us.