My Experience with Totality
I witnessed my first total solar eclipse from the shore of Lake Champlain this week. Was it just another predictable event in the sky? Or does it signify things to come? (audio track below)
I don’t have much on my bucket list anymore. My interests have changed as I have gotten older. Climbing Mount Everest is not only impossible for this 57 year old body, it’s no longer of interest to me. It’s a long drive. It requires schlepping stuff, mainly uphill. It’s chilly at the top, and I’m told there’s no good coffee anywhere near the summit.
Witnessing a total solar eclipse, on other hand, was made relatively convenient this past Monday. Totality was available in Northern Vermont, just a three and half hour drive from home. No schlepping. Burlington has a number of decent cafes with free wifi.
The Astronomical Rarity of the Event
In our solar system with eight planets, over two hundred known moons and a single source of light in the middle of it all, moons are continually casting shadows upon the planets they orbit. However our moon’s apparent size in our sky compared to the sun are very closely matched. This makes for an extremely rare spectacle in our solar system: light from the sun is completely occluded by the moon but the moon isn’t large enough to eclipse the sun’s corona, the extremely hot and dynamic atmosphere of our star which is normally invisible due to its much brighter surface.
Notice the pink solar flares that were visible with the naked eye in the image above.
In his survey of 141 moons in our solar system, computer programmer and eclipse chaser Bill Kramer answered the central question that I have had. He found that there are two moons (one around Saturn and one around Jupiter) that, according to his calculations, could result in a total eclipse of the sun on their respective planetary surfaces.
However these satellites are tiny and orbit their planets very quickly, making for a totality event that would last only a few seconds, and only if you happen to be floating at a precise location on the “surface” of these gaseous giants. Ours is the only planet where one can stand on solid ground and experience this miraculous alignment unfold.
Moreover, the apparent size of the sun and the moon from the Earth is much larger making for a far grander spectacle. How wonderful that of all the planets with moons, the Earth is the closest to the sun and happens to have one of the biggest moons in the solar system!
The moon’s distance from the Earth also is variable. If the moon is at a more distant point from Earth during an eclipse, totality is not possible. The moon will allow sunlight to stream around it and the corona is obscured. This results in an annular eclipse:
The moon’s orbital plane around the Earth is also not aligned with the Earth’s orbital plane with the Sun. This means that the moon’s shadow doesn’t always fall on the surface of the Earth. On Monday apparent sizes were matched perfectly and its shadow was cast upon my part of the world.
And another small miracle : a sunny day in April in New England. Lots of things were in alignment.
Implications of Solar Eclipses on our Psyche
When I was 25 I participated in a scientific expedition at the top of the world. We were camped on an ice floe North East of Greenland in the spring of 1992. For nearly seven weeks I experienced continuous daylight. The Sun wasn’t much higher at noon than at midnight. Having spent my entire life south of the Arctic circle, the absence of nighttime was unexpectedly jarring to me.
I would imagine that this has something to do with the astrological lore around solar eclipses and the significance some place upon this phenomenon. There’s day. Then there’s night. Rinse and repeat, over and over again. What happens when this reliable and unerring cycle gets interrupted, even for a few minutes?
Speaking now from my own experience, I don’t know, and I can’t discount the possibility that at some level something might have shifted.
I distinctly remember the partial eclipse in New England in May, 1994. I was winding down my career as an engineer. Hundreds of us left our offices and stood around the parking lots to stare at the sky with our eclipse glasses. Two months later I was packing my few possessions into my ‘85 Honda Prelude for the drive to Houston, TX where I began my training in medicine.
North America experienced a total eclipse in 2017. At the time I was in Maine where we experienced another partial eclipse. Yet again, just a few weeks later my life completely changed. My understanding of how the world worked was radically altered. That’s when my wife showed me a video of World Trade Center 7 blowing up on 9/11.
I understand that many regard those of us who maintain that 9/11 was a false flag event as out of our minds. That’s fine. But it’s what I believe, and that fundamental belief has shifted everything for me.
Am I just superimposing my own life experiences upon these celestial events? Or are the celestial events driving my experience? We obviously don’t and cannot know. I am musing about the immeasurable, something that doesn’t exist for the rationalists amongst us.
Though my training is in Western allopathic medicine, a field that is fundamentally reductionist in its approach to defining reality, I regard the Universe as a singular, conscious and infinite entity which is in constant flux.
I am a part of it. I am in constant flux too. From this perspective I regard these astronomical events as discrete shifts in the evolution of our individual consciousness, the consciousness of our planet, our solar system, onward and outward.
As I watched the moon slowly move to occlude the sun through my protective eyewear I was in absolute awe of how perfectly shadow and light fit into each other. It was truly astonishing. It is raw perfection which can sometimes shed light onto how we apprehend our reality.
What is it about us that is so quick to assume that what was occurring above must be no more than an uncanny coincidence? Whatever it is, it was, like the sunlight, fading quickly for me.
In those last minutes of normalcy, chalking things like this up to coincidence didn’t seem so intelligent or logical anymore.
Then, in the moment when the last iota of sunlight succumbed to shadow, the world went from an eerie twilight to nighttime in an instant.
I will never forget what I saw in the sky the moment I removed my glasses. Sunshine and light clouds were replaced with a perfectly black orb with a halo of golden light. For over three minutes it seemed I and the thousands around me were magically transported to a galaxy far, far away.
And then it was over. We were brought back. Yes, we were on Earth again, but it isn’t the same Earth as it was. At least not to me. I now live on a planet where things like that can happen, without breathwork, CGI or psychedelics.
Who knows what else is possible here and now…
I had a friendly debate one night with a friend who's a mathematician. He was arguing that everything could ultimately be understood, that science just hasn't figured it all out yet but we're on our way. I asked him, "Isn't it true that every scientific answer opens up multiple new questions?" He agreed that yes, that was definitely true. So I asked, "Well, if questions multiply faster than answers do, how could we ever reach some kind of ultimate answer?" His arguments were the epitome of how logic, if it's applied rigidly, becomes illogical (just as you pointed out how rigid rationality turns irrational).
Happily, he left that night saying he needed to reconsider some things.
I'm a great believer in logic and I don't believe it should ever be abandoned, just as illogic should never be embraced. But that's different from claiming that logic can account for everything, or that it's all we need for a fulfilling life, or that it's somehow a higher principle than, say, love (which to me is the highest). Logic is an essential tool in figuring out what makes sense, but there are things that are beyond logic that we need to grasp, and that requires tuning into other aspects of our awareness and of our capacity to understand. And that realm often goes beyond what can be captured in words or in a logical formula. It doesn't contradict logic -- it isn't illogical -- but rather is beyond it.
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. This insight into the mystery of life, coupled though it be with fear, has also given rise to religion. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong in the ranks of devoutly religious men." This is a quote from Albert Einstein, taken from the internet but actually genuine, surprisingly enough, extracted from a 1930 essay entitled "What I Believe". See also The New Quotable Einstein, p 199, where it appears in a slightly different form. I specify all this because the great physicist has had more ridiculous and/or implausible quotes fathered on him than probably any other man. With that said, I feel the quote echoes very beautifully and succinctly the spirit of Madhava's post, which is beautiful in itself.