Part Six

The "Parable" of Geocentrism

The Astronomer bowed. . . . "Her-Bak, Look west . . . now turn slowly to the east, watching the sky. What do you see?"

"As I turn I keep on seeing new stars."

"If you stand still all night what will you see?"

"I shall see the stars passing before me"

"What moves? The stars or yourself watching them?"

"If I stand still it must be the stars that move." Her-Bak paused. "Unless Earth turns as I have just done. Is this possible?"

The Astronomer smiled at his bewilderment. He gave the disciple time to think, then asked, "If the stars move, if Sun and Moon travel, why should Earth alone in the cosmos stand still? The idea repels you?"

"It would be strange," Her-Bak replied, "If one had to imagine that Earth, that seemed still in a shifting sky, was on the move. But everything I learn proves that my senses are subject to illusion . . . I don't dare deny that such movement takes place if you tell me it is so."

The Astronomer watched Her-Bak benevolently. "I will make no statement, " he said. "Your experience of illusion is enough to make you careful. What mattes to Earth's inhabitants is that they should know of their vital connection with the sky. As to the movement of the stars, it is better to note what you see than to imagine what may deflect you from the real meaning. Then we will place ourselves at the center of the sky we are watching, where all star-movement is seen by reference to ourselves." (5)

I am suggesting that it is we in the modern world who have been naive about the cosmos. We have rejected geocentrism, the idea that the earth is the center of the cosmos, for naive reasons. And consequently the great power in heliocentrism, the idea that the planets revolve around the sun, has become a destructive influence in the life of Western civilization.

There were indeed ancient systems of the universe in which the earth was said to move around the sun. Yet it is the geocentric conception which had publicly dominated the life of Western man up until the scientific revolution. In the above quotation there is the strong suggestion that the learned men of ancient Egypt held back the heliocentric understanding from the multitudes (the public conception was of the earth as a disc covered by the starry vault of heaven). Why? Why would the heliocentric system be kept secret?

Could it be that a certain psychological preparation, a level of existential maturity, is necessary before a human life can truly profit from the understanding that this planet is one of billions of dependent worlds revolving around great suns, themselves dependent, in a vast organic universe where all places are in movement and in which no physical center ever can exist?

It is possible that geocentrism was originally meant as "a parable spoken to the multitudes?" And is the development of heliocentrism in modern times a flagrant example of what happens when a truth which can only be correctly valued by "intelligence of the heart" is formulated and received in the intellect alone?

Lest we believe there is something self glorifying about the "parable" of geocentrism, let us take a closer look at the situation of man in this view. For one thing, the image of the earth at the center of the universe communicates the idea of a vast convergence of forces upon our plane of reality. This is hardly a comforting thought, as we are rather accustomed to believing we recognize the major forces at work upon us. We tend to think that a powerful force, even if we do not understand it in itself, always makes itself know to us by its effects. But in ancient geocentrism the spheres or forces that surround the earth are both more powerful and more subtle than anything originating on the earth itself. Understood in this way, geocentrism humbles man and calls him to search for a finer understanding of the influences that shape this life and the life of his world.

It is therefore a great mistake to assume, as all modern writers have, that ancient geocentrism exaggerated man's importance in the scheme of things. For to be at the center meant in effect to be at the lowest rung in the ladder of influences that begin in the divinity which lies outside the spheres. Moreover, and this is essential, ancient geocentrism understood that the forces represented by the sphere acted not only upon the earth, but upon individual man. If man were unaware of the influences governing the life of their planet, this picture of the universe told them they were all the more unaware of the influences governing their every-day lives. And it is precisely this aspect of ancient geocentrism which modern scholars have either failed to appreciate or ignored completely.

It is geocentrism, without the idea of microcosmic man, which modern science rejected. But a purely external geocentrism never existed in the ancient world. It is only we, who have lost the idea of the microcosm, who see it that way; and, seen that way, geocentrism surely becomes an idiocy, or--at least--a convenience for calculations. But taken with the idea of the microcosm, geocentrism reminds man that objective reality contains many kinds of influences that can act upon us, that there is a scale of being to which man is born would he but search for it as diligently as he pursues the satisfaction of external life. It is we who imagine that geocentrism was merely a balm for the ego and a primitive astronomical theory. Because we, having lost the idea of microcosmic man, separate scientific from existential ideas, we imagine that this separation is what ancient man was grappling for when on the contrary it was precisely what he was struggling against.