Deep and again deep: The gateway to all mystery . . . A meditation on the total eclipse of the sun, 2024

Photo by Luc Viatour / https://Lucnix.be

A short “thought for the day” offered to the Cambridge Unitarian Church as part of the Sunday Service of Mindful Meditation.   

(Click on this link to hear a recorded version of the following piece) 

—o0o—

As most of you will know, last week in the USA, there was a total eclipse of the sun, one of the most awesome natural phenomena that any human being can experience. Alas, I have only ever seen a partial eclipse of the sun, that which took place in October 1996 and which I saw with my wife Susanna and her workmates in the garden of the workshops of Edward Harpley Curtain Poles Finials and Pelmets Ltd in Brettenham, Suffolk. Although only 60% of the sun was covered, nevertheless, that afternoon I felt something akin to what the American Eastern Orthodox and Christian universalist theologian, David Bentley Hart, felt just a few days ago:

“I felt a peculiar serenity come over me, and even a kind of elation—I think because, for those few minutes, I felt as if I had slipped over into some other, more mysteriously beautiful, somehow timeless world. One thing about the experience, however, was new: the sight of the sun swallowed up in the absolute, impenetrable darkness of the moon’s silhouette brought to my mind the final lines of the first chapter of the Daodejing, which speak of the one source of all things as an abyss of mystery that is also a gateway into the essence of things…”

          TAO called TAO is not TAO.
          Names can name no lasting name.
          Nameless: the origin of heaven and earth.
          Naming: the mother of ten thousand things.
          Empty of desire, perceive mystery.
          Filled with desire, perceive manifestations.
          These have the same source, but different names.
          Call them both deep — Deep and again deep:
          The gateway to all mystery.

Tao Te Ching trans: Stephen Addiss & Stanley Lombardo
   
Now, by every human existential measure, a total eclipse of the sun is an astonishing event. But there is something non-existential, i.e. a scientifically measurable natural fact, about the phenomenon that may serve to do the seemingly impossible and make the actual event, the eclipse, it even more existentially astonishing than before. I first saw what this was thanks, many years ago, to a passage found in Iain M. Banks’ 2009 sci-fi novel, “Transition.” In it, he points out what an incredible coincidence it is that our moon fits exactly over our sun:

“Talk to astronomers and they’ll tell you that Earth’s moon is relatively [speaking] much bigger than any other moon round any other planet. Most planets, like Jupiter and Saturn and so on, have moons that are tiny in comparison to themselves. Earth’s moon is enormous, and very close to us. If it was smaller or further away, you’d only ever get partial eclipses; bigger or closer, and it hides the sun completely and there’d be no halo of light round the moon at totality. This is an astounding coincidence, an incredible piece of luck. And for all we know, eclipses like this are unique. This could be a phenomenon that happens on Earth and nowhere else.”

Banks asks us to hold on to this thought, and then asks us to imagine some kind of alien species; “not E.T. aliens that are cute or alone”, nor “Independence Day aliens” that are “crazily aggressive,” but just, “well, regular aliens” who have somehow figured out how to travel between the stars. In Bank’s imagination, these regular aliens have, for the most part, started to fly around the universe in starships for pretty much the same reason most human beings now travel around the world in airliners, namely tourism. And one of the most popular tourist destinations for them is our little planet Earth. Why?

Well, given humankind’s tendency to extreme hubris, many people might be tempted to think that Earth is the favoured tourist destination of these regular aliens because of us, the o-so-important human species. But, as I’m sure you’ve already realised, Banks’ regular aliens have almost no interest in us except, perhaps, as a vaguely interesting bit of local fauna. Anyway, Banks then says:

“[W]hat I want to propose to you is that, as well as all [the other wonders in the cosmos and on planet Earth they could visit and see] they would definitely want to see that one precious thing that we [here on Earth] have and probably nobody else does. They’d want to see our eclipse. They’d want to look through the Earth’s atmosphere with their own eyes and see the moon fit over the sun, watch the light fade down to almost nothing, listen to the animals nearby fall silent and feel with their own skins the sudden chill in the air that comes with totality. Even if they can’t survive in our atmosphere, even if they need a spacesuit to keep them alive, they’d still want to get as close as they possibly could to seeing it in the raw, in as close to natural conditions as it’s possible to arrange. They’d want to be here, amongst us, when the shadow passes. So that’s where you look for aliens. In the course of an eclipse totality track. When everybody else is looking awestruck at the sky, you need to be looking round for anybody who looks weird or overdressed, or who isn’t coming out of their R[ecreational] V[ehicles] or their moored yacht with the heavily smoked glass.”

However, I imagine that like most of you, in the actual moment of experiencing a total solar eclipse, I’m pretty certain I’d completely forget to look around me for aliens and, like many millions of people last week, including David Bentley Hart, I’d simply find myself absolutely transfixed by that awesome, local star-sized ensō in the sky, a circle of light that can suddenly symbolize for us absolute enlightenment, strength, elegance, the whole universe, and also mu (無), the absolute nothingness that is the very abyss of mystery but which is also a gateway into the essence of things. 

But, alas, as you’ve heard, I wasn’t there, and so as the solar eclipse unfolded, I was able to take a little time to think some more about what useful lessons Banks’ parable about visiting aliens might be able to teach us. I imagine one could draw out of it several lessons, but the primary one remains for me that to which I have already briefly pointed, namely, a reminder that our own species is not the central, most important fact/focus of the cosmos, nor of our own small planet, nor even of some interstellar tourist company providing trips for regular aliens. No, not at all! This is because what lies at the centre of the cosmos, and which should always-already be the focus of our devotion and gratitude, is the very abyss of mystery which is also a gateway into the essence of things, and which has for millennia — and for obvious, contingent reasons — so often been deeply felt by Homo sapiens during the course of every total eclipse of the sun.

And really I could, and perhaps should, simply stop with this point. But shortly after the total eclipse finished, a funny thing happened that made me write just a couple of sentences more. 

You see, a video was taken during the event that went viral on social media because it seemed to some viewers to have captured the moment when a UFO flew across the sky. It was probably — was almost certainly — simply a shadow cast by a passing aircraft of some kind. But this fleeting piece of footage allows me to add the thought that, even were it a real UFO full of regular alien tourists — and I do not think it was — the amazing thing, the truly amazing thing, would not be their arrival amongst us, but, instead, it would be the fact that nature-doing-what-nature-does (natura naturans as Spinoza puts it) has gifted us on this planet something so astonishing and vanishingly rare that it was able to draw creatures from across the universe to stand together with us whilst sharing a deep sense of wonder, joy and gratitude for simple fact of existence, for this unique, unfolding moment, now. And, if this were possible (or kiv’yachol, as the old rabbis often put it), in this shared moment before the very abyss of mystery which is also a gateway into the essence of things, wouldn’t this kind of hanging out with awestruck regular aliens be a wonderful expression of the truth of Imaoka Shin’ichirō-sensei’s feeling that faith in the trinity of self, others, and the cooperative society will always tend further to unite heaven and earth and all things, to form a universal cooperative society? 

And with that [thought] cue my clinking of my glass of cold beer with my visiting regular alien neighbour standing close by, looking at that eclipse, and a shared toast to natura naturans, the mysterious mother of all that is.

I like to think that Banks’ visiting regular aliens would agree with this thought, and I hope you do, too.