Pale blue dot

Posted August 20th, 2007 by Matija

I found an interesting photo today, and it made me think once again, so I'll put it here.

If you look more closely to the far right beam of light, you'll notice a small blue dot. That's Earth. This picture was taken by Voyager, at a distance of about 4 bilion miles. Here is what an astronomer, Carl Sagan, says about it (I don't think I could say it better myself, quite the contrary):

We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you've ever heard of, every human being who ever was lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish this pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

Thanks for that, Matija. I

anonymous's picture
On August 20th, 2007 MikeL says:

Thanks for that, Matija. I really liked that quote. It is so powerful and so very true.

I find those words really

orangesky's picture
On August 20th, 2007 Mauricio says:

I find those words really moving. If only everyone on this planet could open our perspective a little and see that there's really an eternal more than just the whole of problems conflicts and issues in society. But we tend to forget, and make our lives a caos identifying with even untangible fractions of that dot.

Thanks Matija! That's very

DeanW's picture
On August 20th, 2007 Dean says:

Thanks Matija!
That's very eloquently put, makes me stop and reflect on my own subjectivity. I haven't read any of Carl Sagan's books but Contact is one of my favourite films, it's very much in the spirit of what he says there.

Something to

sashi's picture
On August 20th, 2007 sasha sainty says:

Something to ponder!!!
That’s amazing!!! And truly awe inspiring!!! Thank you so much Matija for finding something so beautifully written, it touched not only me but also my family and when I finished reading it, I noticed that most of them had tears in their eyes – my youngest child (Nathan aged 10yrs) asked me if God really cares about this tiny dot in the universe? So I asked him why he asked that question, and he said, because at night when he looks up at the sky, all he see’s are dots and how many there are, and maybe God is too busy to look after us and that’s why we have to do it on our own. I had to ponder that question for a while before answering him. My answer to him was - that we have to take care and responsibility for our thoughts and actions and let God take care of the rest!!!

In light & love
Sasha

Thankyou for sharing that

matthewbutler's picture
On August 20th, 2007 Matthew b says:

Thankyou for sharing that Matija, it sure puts things in perspective.

Sasha, thanks for sharing that conversation with your son too. I found that really touching.

That's a very interesting

Vadim's picture
On August 21st, 2007 Vadim says:

That's a very interesting perspective, thanks for sharing, Matija!

I'm glad it had the same

Matija's picture
On August 21st, 2007 Matija says:

I'm glad it had the same effect on everyone. The first thing I thought when I found it was how we can be grateful for having that beam of light, otherwise we'd be in total darkness...

Thanks a lot Matija. Your

davidg's picture
On August 24th, 2007 David G says:

Thanks a lot Matija.

Your blog post reminded me a lot of this Calvin and Hobbes cartoon:

http://www.sciencemusings.com/blog/uploaded_images/DustSpeck-771221.jpg

Seeing the picture you posted made me think about how insignificant a lot of the things I think are important or spend (waste) time on really are (new pedals for my bike for instance).

Re: the light beam, same could be said for our consciousness and Divine Parents!

I saw this on the homepage

Shane's picture
On August 25th, 2007 ShaneB says:

I saw this on the homepage for a while and thought it was someone doing some technical tests so ignored it...

Looking through the blogs I realised there was more to it, so had a look..

That's another amazing picture...
Thanks a million for that Matija.

Such images really do make time stand still... stepping out of the illusory knowing into the void of ....

It is said that time is an illusion, in the context of this image it is and it isn't. Which reminded me of something someone sent to me recently saying

" For thousands of years the Schumann Resonance or pulse (hearbeat) of Earth has been 7.83 cycles per second. The military have used this as a very reliable reference for years. However, since 1980 this resonance has been slowly rising. It is now over 12 cycles per second! This means there is the equivalent of less than 16 hours per day instead of the old 24 hours! We can now legitimately say - there is not enough hours in a day!"

This clearly makes us feel the urgency of prioritising in our life. I sometimes wonder when looking at such an image of the earth, that the feeling of time standing still, is similar to a rabbit in pitch darkness, crossing the road, then stopping, paralysed by the oncoming headlight glare and noise...

The inner work seems so impossible and so easy to forget and ignore, yet looking at it from 4 billion miles away...it's easy to feel how death is imminent.

Imagine when earth is a

ptr1968's picture
On August 27th, 2007 ptr1968 says:

Imagine when earth is a small dot to see. When I see myself like this, I'm just nothing.
Good to remember when fighting pride.

The last couple of years I was thinking and also hearing from a lot of people that time is flying faster and faster, so this is actually true...
Maybe that's why so many people are stressed out and that the opposites of everything like weather, egos etc. are so big.
Maybe its due to Hercolubus already pulling with its powerfull magnetic force.

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