The Sun Doesn’t Illuminate

The ability to perceive in animals and humans is contrasted by energy and/or matter, which as far as we know cannot in themselves perceive.

When we speak of “light”, we think of its luminous quality; the essence of the energy that allows us to better see objects. However, light itself is not luminous. Light is luminous only through direct perception, because to assess the luminous quality of light, perception is required. You can imagine the universe, with all the joules of energy pulsating and circulating, where not a single photon of light illuminates anything; that is the universe without perception.

Snakes, for example, do not experience the same sight as humans. Much of the light which blasts us and produces sights are completely imperceivable by snakes, because that particular luminosity cannot be digested by snake eyes. It is light unreceived, and lacks luminosity from the point-of-view of the snake. This is a microcosmic example of the macrocosmic concept that although light may be emanating from a source, without perception that light cannot be seen. The suns of the cosmos shower their surrounding matter with energy, but it can never be said to illuminate unless perceived. The idea of luminosity or illumination is completely dependent on human perception. 

Even more chilling is the fact that this doesn’t just apply to light, but to felt temperature, taste, smell, and hearing. If no entity perceives the goings-on of the cosmos, then none of it exists. Without perception, it’s not that the universe becomes dark, but rather there is no universe. Thus, before perception was instantiated, there was no cosmos.

In fact, the idea that we can today measure the current duration of our expansion is completely irrelevant. This world did not start until it was experienced. Anything before that is simply speculation based on measurements. Ask yourself this; in your dreams, when you are dropped into a false world, does that world seem to you a second old, or does it feel it has been established for millions of years? And if you measured the dream universe with dream astrophysics tools and concluded through dream evidence that the universe is billions of years old, you would believe it. Yet from the waking state we know the dream world didn’t exist at all, and it didn’t even have an age. 

The point is all our knowledge and measurements are for making conclusions regarding a world as “real” as the dream one.