Q: I read somewhere that Sun is the only material object that is self-illuminating in material world. But present day science says that all stars that we see in the sky are all self-illuminating and they are some timesmore powerful than the Sun in our solar system. Can you please give someinsight on how planets are situated according to Vedic description?
Answer: Yes, Srila Prabhupada makes this assertion based on the statementsof Bhagavad-Gita and Bhagavatam. Krishna statesin BG 10.21, "Among the stars I am the moon." Also, in BG 13.34 and 15.12He asserts that the sun alone illuminates thewhole universe.
I took some direct assistance from Sadaputa Prabhu in responding to yourquestion, and here is one paragraph extracted fromwhat he wrote to me in reply:
"The Vedic literature describes the universe as having one sun, and thesame is true of European cultural tradition up to the time of Copernicus andGalileo. Srila Prabhupada has granted that stars may have the samecomposition as the sun, and the story of Arjuna traveling to the region ofthe stars indicates that stars may shine with their own light. This agreeswith the scientific observation that stars have an emission spectrum. If wedefine a sun to be a star illuminating inhabited planets, then our sun isthe only such star that is known to science at the present time. (Indeed,the earth is the only planet known by science to have life.) In that sense,science knows of only one sun in the universe at the present time, eventhough many scientists tend to believe that there are other inhabitedplanets. (It is ironic that leading Darwinian evolutionists such asTheodosius Dobhzansky and George Gaylord Simpson have argued that human-likelife must be limited to the earth due to the great improbability that itwill evolve twice by the random Darwinian evolutionary process.)"
According to Vedic description, there are innumerable universes floating inthe Causal Ocean, and each universe is enveloped by 7 layers of elementalmatter. Thus everything visible to us, including all the stars, lie withinthe boundaries of our particular universe and there is only one sun withineach universe. The Brahma samhita also says that sun is the eye of theuniverse.
Scientists conclude that the stars must be very far away and by the inversesquare law of propogation of light they must beshining very brightly. Also, since it is observed that light from the starsshow an emission spectrum, it must follow that they are actively generatinglight rather than passively reflecting it. Thus they deduce that the starsmust be like the sun or more powerful. But as we discussed above, physicallaws observed on earth cannot be assumed to hold universally.
Besides, although Prabhupada concluded that the stars derive illuminationfrom the sun, this does not exclude the possibility of their generatingtheir own light. The Mahabharata describes Arjuna traveling to the region ofthe stars, en route to heaven, and seeing the presiding denizens and sagesof the stars shining with the effulgence of their ascetic merits. Similarly,Srila Prabhupada gives an 'educated guess' that there may be pleasing flameson the moon that generate illumination as they do in some regions of theBhumandala. (SB 5.20.13 p) Prabhupada does also say that the stars may alsohave a similar composition as the sun, but they are not independent suns.(Letter to Svarupa Damodara dasa, Nov. 21, 1975)
See also SB 4.12.36 purport: "In the spiritual world the Vaikunthalokas arethemselves illuminated; there is therefore no need of sun, moon or electriclight. It is in fact the illumination of the Vaikunthalokas which isreflected in the material sky. Only by this reflection are the suns in thematerial universes illuminated; after the illumination of the sun, all thestars and moons are illuminated. In other words, all the luminaries in thematerial sky borrow illumination from Vaikunthaloka."See also descriptions such as found in the 4th Canto, where it is describedthat "the solar systems and other planets rotate, or circumabulate, aroundthe Pole Star." See SB 4.12.25. Reference is made, as you can see, tomultiple solar systems.- H.H. Romapada Swami
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On Sun and Stars
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