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Native American Traditions
A number of sources have reported that several Native American
cultures, particularly tribes in the Southwest and the Rocky Mountain area,
engaged in sungazing. Over the years, especially during my stays at yogic
ashrams and spiritual centers, I have encountered Native American medicine men
and shamans who have told me that their ancestors practiced sungazing (although
they admitted that they did not personally do so), and, as I may have recounted
elsewhere on this page, my friend Patrick once spent several days with a Native
American medicine man in the Southwest who still practiced sungazing. He shared
much of his practice with Patrick: it seems that his sungazing was always done
in the early morning, at sunrise and for up to a half-hour afterward, and always
done with a sense of profound gratitude for the sun and the gifts it offers us.
Aztec, Mayan and Inca Traditions
There is some evidence, according to Gene Savoy and some copies
of articles from journals from the early part of the 20th century which a friend
sent to me in the 1980s, that the priests and priestesses of the Mayan and Aztec
cultures and similar cultural traditions, including the Incas of Peru, in
Central and South America engaged in sungazing. It is less clear whether this
practice was ever shared with the "masses" by the priests,
priestesses and sorcerers. In fact, several correspondents have told me that
Gene Savoy has claimed that the high priestesses and priests of these traditions
were so eager to keep the power of the sun for themselves that they kept the
general populace terrified of the sun, and particularly scared of looking at it,
by spreading myths that staring at the sun was extremely dangerous. Of course,
some amateur Egyptologists and occultists have made much the same claim about
the priestesses and priests of ancient Egypt and their (supposed) sungazing
rituals, namely, that they kept the populace terrified of the power of the sun
in order to protect their secrets
Beyond the Enterprise - Fusion power
A step back from antimatter is fusion, the power source of the future
for the last five decades. Controlled fusion - joining two lightweight
nuclei to get a slightly heavier nucleus and a lot of energy - has
been challenging. In their quest to exceed Q=1, the break-even point,
scientists have moved from low energy yields of Q=0.0000000000001 in
the late 1950s to Q=0.3 today, and developed a large body of
engineering and scientific knowledge showing that it can be made
practical. |
Dirac himself was the
first to consider the existence of antimatter in an astronomical scale.
But it was only after the confirmation of his theory, with the discovery
of the positron, antiproton and antineutron that real speculation began on
the possible existence of an antiuniverse
In 1930, Paul Dirac
developed the first description of the electron that was consistent with
both quantum mechanics and special relativity. One of the remarkable
predictions of this theory was that an anti-particle of the electron
should exist. This antielectron would be expected to have the same mass as
the electron, but opposite electric charge and magnetic moment. In 1932,
Carl Anderson, was examining tracks produced by cosmic rays in a cloud
chamber. One particle made a track like an electron, but the curvature of
its path in the magnetic field showed that it was positively charged. He
named this positive electron a positron. We know that the particle
Anderson detected was the anti-electron predicted by Dirac. In the 1950's,
physicists at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory used the Bevatron
accelerator to produce the anti-proton, that is a particle with the same
mass and spin as the proton, but with negative charge and opposite
magnetic moment to that of the proton. In order to create the anti-proton,
protons were accelerated to very high energy and then smashed into a
target containing other protons. Occasionally, the energy brought into the
collision would produce a proton-antiproton pair in addition to the
original two protons. This result gave credibility to the idea that for
every particle there is a corresponding antiparticle.
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A Penn State artist's concept
of n antimatter-powered Mars ship
with equipment and crew landers at the right, and the engine, with
magnetic nozzles, at left.
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"Our aim is to get up to a microgram
of antiprotons," Smith said. "There are some interesting propulsion
technologies that work at that level. We think we can do it."
A trillion antiprotons is the
maximum that can be stored under those conditions. More could be held
if they were turned into anti-hydrogen, anti-protons plus positrons.
A lot of bang for
the buck
Right now, antimatter is the most expensive
substance on Earth, about $62.5 trillion a gram ($1.75 quadrillion an
ounce). The production is, at best, 50 percent efficient because half
of what's created are regular protons, and the equipment now used was
not designed to fuel rockets. Harold Gerrish of NASA/Marshall and
others estimate that improvements in equipment to slow and trap the
antiprotons could bring the price down to about $5,000 per microgram.
A new injector at Fermilab outside Chicago will allow that facility to
increase its production tenfold, from 1.5 to 15 nanograms a year. |
Antimatter has tremendous energy density," said Dr.
George Schmidt, chief of propulsion research and technology at
NASA/Marshall. Matter-antimatter annihilation - the complete conversion of
matter into energy - releases the most energy per unit mass of any known
reaction in physics.
Antimatter
In 1930, Paul Dirac developed the
first description of the electron that was consistent with both quantum
mechanics and special relativity. One of the remarkable predictions of
this theory was that an anti-particle of the electron should exist. This
antielectron would be expected to have the same mass as the electron,
but opposite electric charge and magnetic moment. In 1932, Carl
Anderson, was examining tracks produced by cosmic rays in a cloud
chamber. One particle made a track like an electron, but the curvature
of its path in the magnetic field showed that it was positively charged.
He named this positive electron a positron. We know that the particle
Anderson detected was the anti-electron predicted by Dirac. In the
1950's, physicists at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory used the
Bevatron accelerator to produce the anti-proton, that is a particle with
the same mass and spin as the proton, but with negative charge and
opposite magnetic moment to that of the proton. In order to create the
anti-proton, protons were accelerated to very high energy and then
smashed into a target containing other protons. Occasionally, the energy
brought into the collision would produce a proton-antiproton pair in
addition to the original two protons. This result gave credibility to
the idea that for every particle there is a corresponding antiparticle.
Scientists have discovered that
comets are natural sources of antimatter. The
announcement was made at April 2002
joint meeting of
American
Physical Society and
American
Astronomical Society. Antimatter is a mirror image of matter. The
update
Periodic Table Elements has 109 matter and 109 antimatter elements.
Each antimatter element’s nuclear, physical, and chemical properties have
been defined to such an extent that people know almost as much about
antimatter as matter.
When matter
and antimatter come together, energy is created according to Einstein's
equation of mass times the speed of light squared or E = mc2:
the most efficient energy source in the universe
Antimatter is the mirror image of ordinary matter and both should
have been created in equal quantities at the birth of the Universe. That
everything around is predominantly ordinary matter is therefore a major
puzzle.
LINKS
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A lot of bang for the buck
Right now, antimatter is the most expensive
substance on Earth, about $62.5 trillion a gram ($1.75 quadrillion an
ounce). The production is, at best, 50 percent efficient because half
of what's created are regular protons, and the equipment now used was
not designed to fuel rockets. Harold Gerrish of NASA/Marshall and
others estimate that improvements in equipment to slow and trap the
antiprotons could bring the price down to about $5,000 per microgram.
A new injector at Fermilab outside Chicago will allow that facility to
increase its production tenfold, from 1.5 to 15 nanograms a year.
"Right now, a lot of antiprotons
are produced, but most are wasted," Gerrish said.
Dr. Steven Howe of Synergistic
Technologies in Los Alamos, N.M., explained that CERN is working
towards producing anti-hydrogen as part of the Athena fundamental
physics program to determine if antimatter indeed is indistinguishable
from matter. Using the same Ioffe-Pritchard trap being developed at
CERN, he expects that large quantities of anti-hydrogen atoms could be
stored safely for long periods. At low temperatures, the wavelength of
the atom is several times that of the material making up the container
walls, so the atoms are reflected with little effort. |
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Atoms of anti-hydrogen, which consist
of a positron orbiting an antiproton, are believed to have been
created in 1995 at the CERN laboratory in Europe. Physicists are now
searching for very small differences between the properties of matter
atoms and antimatter atoms. This will help confirm or confound our
understanding of the symmetry between matter and anti-matter. |
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Antimatter meteors and comets have
collided with the Earth, Jupiter, and Sun. In June 1908,
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A particle and its antimatter
particle annihilate when they meet: they disappear and their kinetic plus
rest-mass energy is converted into other particles (E = mc2).
For example, when an electron and a positron annihilate at rest, two gamma
rays, each with energy 511 keV, are produced. These gamma rays go off in
opposite directions because both energy and momentum must be conserved.
The annihilation of positrons and electrons is the basis of Positron
Emission Tomography (PET) discussed in the section on Applications (Chapter
14). When a proton and an antiproton annihilate at rest, other particles
are usually produced, but the total kinetic plus rest mass energies of
these products adds up to twice the rest mass energy of the proton (2 x
938 MeV).
Antimatter is also produced in some
radioactive decays. When 14C decays, a neutron decays to a
proton plus an electron and an electron antineutrino,
 . When
19Ne decays, a proton decays to a neutron plus a positron, e+,
and an electron neutrino,
 .
14C
--> 14N + e- +
19Ne
--> 19F + e+ +
The neutrino and electron are leptons
while the antineutrino and positron are anti-leptons. Leptons are
point-like particles that interact with the electromagnetic, weak and
gravitational interaction, but not the strong interaction. An antilepton
is an antiparticle. In each reaction, one lepton and one antilepton is
produced. These processes show a fundamental law of physics - that for
each new lepton that is produced there is a corresponding new antilepton.
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http://www.rawpaleodiet.org/sungazing/
Sungazing in the Early Days of Hinduism, Jainism and
Yoga
There is ample and substantial evidence in numerous
ancient scriptures from early Hinduism, Jainism and the Yoga
traditions (the latter usually, but not always, within the fold of
Hinduism) that many early practitioners engaged in sungazing both
for health reasons and for spiritual reasons. Many readers will have
already deduced this from the sections above on Hira Manek and
SunYogi Umasankar, both of whom make ample reference to early Hindu
and Yogic scriptures about sungazing.
Sungazing in Ancient Egypt
It has been repeatedly asserted in many forms and
places that the ancient Egyptians engaged in sungazing, and I was
sent a photocopy in the mid-1980's of a page or two from an early
20th century book on ancient on Egypt which also made this
assertion, but I hardly consider any of these sources to be highly
reputable and reliable. After doing a bit of research, I was able to
discover that there existed, in the 18th dynasty of Egypt, a
relatively short-lived religion often known as the cult of Aton,
also known as Atonism, which was reputedly involved in sun worship
and sun gazing. Incidentally, this religion was monotheistic, and
the one god was Aton, the solar orb. It is of course, also true that
many religious and spiritual traditions scattered throughout Egypt's
past worshipped the sun in some way or the other, or used the sun in
religious rituals, but this does not necessarily imply that they
were sungazers.
Sungazing in Qi Gong (aka Chi Kung or Qi
Gung) Traditions
A number of traditions within the broad realm of
inner Qi Gong (aka Chi Kung), often called Taoist Internal Martial
Arts, which encompasses numerous lineages/schools such as Tai Chi,
Ba Kua (aka Ba Kua, Ba Ge, Ba Qua), Hsing I and other systems, as
well as more mainstream (e.g., more external) Qi Gong practices,
have espoused sungazing over the years, primarily as a means of
attaining greater physical and emotional health. It also seems that
a tremendous amount of ancient knowledge may have been lost in some
of these Chi Kung (aka Qi Gong) systems such as Tai Chi and Ba
Kuaover the years, and that they may not offer the same "potency"
anymore, and that sungazing may have been one of the components lost.
As noted above, however, there are still some schools of Ba Kua
in China and the West which do teach sungazing as part of the
discipline, and Hira Manek has told me that he has been in contact
with teachers and masters in the Ba Kua system who employ sungazing.
Incidentally, I studied Ba Kua for about two years
with a Chinese Taoist master in the late 1970's at the William C. C
Chen school in New York City, but he never mentioned sungazing as a
component of Ba Gua.
Sun Staring: The Ahmadiyah Sect of Islam
Members of the Ahmadiyah sect, an Islamic sect,
reportedly sungaze, often at high noon. Much of this practice is
said to date to practices of the Islamic saint Ahmad al-Badawi, who
predated the Ähmadiyah Sect by some six hundred and fifty years.
Somewhat unfortunately, although there are a number of webpages to
be found which talk about Ahmadiyah sect to some extent, the only
real mentions of their sungazing practices are to be found on the
pages of the God-u-Like website site, "an irreverent look at the
faith industry", or " Everything You Wanted To Know About The Faith
Business But Were Too Confused To Ask", a website which offers as
somewhat cynical view of numerous religions and sects
The Various "Essene" Religions of the Past
Hundred Years
The original Essenes were a religion and essentially
a culture which existed largely in the pre-Christian era. However,
with the modern discovery of some early Essene scriptures and
documents, some of which testified to the rather natural and
healthful lifestyle of the Essenes, there has been a resurgence of
many "Essene" religions since the early 1900's. One of the more
famous from the early 20th century was the Essene religion, often
known as the International Biogenic Society, founded by
Edmond Bordeaux Szekely, who had a modest band of followers and who
published many slim tracts on his philosophy and lifestyle, with
names like "Essene Communions with the Infinite" and "The
Essene Code of Life". The society still exists today, and still
publishes Szekely's books, and his widow, at least until recently,
continued to run a partly-raw vegetarian health resort at which
several of my friends have stayed over the years. Anyway, much as
you have likely already guessed, one of the primary tenets of this
new Essene religion was lots of sunbathing, and even (at least for
some members, according to correspondents who have been involved
with the movement) sungazing. And now, having dispensed with this
primer on modern Essene religions, we are ready to move on to
discussing one of the most colorful, "larger-than-life" and
swashbuckling figures of the past century, Gene Savoy...
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http://www.rawpaleodiet.org/sungazing/ Ramon (Ray) Sender
Ramon (nickname Ray) Sender is a famed musician who
lives on the West Coast, and has been practicing sungazing since the
early 1960s. In early October 2003, he sent me a wonderfully
illustrative and informative letter via e-mail, which I share with
you below. Please note his mention, toward the end of his letter, of
Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov, a Bulgarina/French mystic from the early
part of the 20th century. There is a very brief section on
Aivanhov and sungazing on this page. A copy of Ray's letter,
including links to sun-related articles on one of his websites,
appears below. Ray may be reached at nvmin@mindspring.com
His letter, reproduced with permission, follows:
Dear Vinny:
I very much appreciated your sungazing essay,
and all the research that went into it. I'll be running down
some of the names you mention - and also wouldn't mind having
the real names of some of the others.
I've been sungazing quite steadily since
1966, when I broke out of the consensus reality that the
majority of people seem to agree to share into an understanding
that everything is conscious, and the sun - as the creator
source, is of a consciousness much more developed than ours --
actually to the point where we can truthfully consider her a
goddess-node in our particular sector of the galaxy
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