This short article sketches the true relationship between the solar system as mental or symbol of cosmic mind and its actual physical expression. With any luck I'll come back and expand this essay.

"Buddhi as the Solar System" [click image +]

Have we ever seen the Solar System? Yes? Think again. And there lies our answer. We think we've seen it, that we can see it, that we are imagining it even now. Wrong, wrong, and wrong again! We haven't seen it, we can't see it, and we can't even imagine it! What's happening is that we're remembering our belief in an artist's conception (probably circa 3rd grade) of what the Solar System would look like if we could see it from someplace far beyond its perimeter.

There are really two issues here - first correcting our understanding of what and where the solar system is, and second, confronting our own unholy blend of understanding, thinking, imagination, and beliefs. Regarding the first issue - the solar system, let's begin by taking modern astronomers as the final word in modeling the universe (a habit the public has been supporting since prehistoric times). A modern macro description of the solar system is: "an orderly community of one star, nine planets, 50 moons, thousands of asteroids, billions of meteoroids, spanning 6 billion kilometers."

So. Put a dot on a piece of paper and call it the sun. Now surround the dot with 9 more dots. {.........} Now add 50 more - we can visualize fifty easily enough, just think of the stars on a modern American flag. We can even imagine that we put the fifty little dots on a piece of paper without doing it, and not be far wrong - even assuming that it takes a couple of seconds per dot, that works out to less than two minutes of our time. {...............................................}