The NASA has just published a timelapse video to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). The video shows impressive highlights from the last five years of sun watching, or 1826 days in space. The observatory provides incredibly detailed images of the Sun 24 hours a day. You can see giant clouds of solar material hurled out into space, the dance of giant loops hovering in the corona, and huge sunspots growing and shrinking on the Sun’s surface.
By watching the sun in different wavelengths – and therefore different temperatures – scientists watch how material courses through the corona. They want to understand the clues to what causes eruptions on the sun, what heats the Sun’s atmosphere up to 1,000 times hotter than its surface, and why the Sun’s magnetic fields are constantly on the move.
Looking at the pulsating heart of our solar system, we also have to realize that this is only the outer aspect of the Sun which, according to the Eastern wisdom consists of three different dimensions. The physical Sun is like a lense giving expression to the heart or soul of the Sun, and to the spiritual sun. The new book of Dr. K. Parvathi Kumar about “SUN – THAT I AM” (PDF) gives a profound insight into these subtle dimensions:
“When we think of Sun we need to think of the very consciousness, which is the basis of our solar system. Each one of us is but a unit of consciousness. Each one of us is a micro Sun. The other name for this consciousness is ‘I AM’. When we speak of Sun we speak of I Am consciousness. In other words we are speaking of ourselves. The self in you and in me is no different from the self of the Solar Angel. It is but the same consciousness manifested in different dimensions and magnitudes. The essence of the Sun and us is but one and the same. We are no different from our Sun. Let us learn to see the Sun as no different from I Am. The Veda says, “The Sun I see and I Am are but one.”
Photo from the video (c) NASA