Natural food pioneer and fractal artist Gregory Sams’ new book Sun of gOd: Discover the Self-Organizing Consciousness That Underlies Everything is simply one of the wisest, most lucid and most thoughtfully written books that I’ve ever encountered on integrating spirituality with science and other disciplines. Sams makes the outrageous and heretical proposal that “a universal consciousness pervades all matter”, and that everything in the universe is alive with consciousness and intelligence. Then, audaciously, he asks us to consider the even more radical possibility that our sun is “a living conscious being, with an intelligence that dwarfs our own … aware of itself and its place in the universe”.

This certainly isn’t a new idea. In fact, it’s quite ancient. However, it’s definitely been a repressed and ridiculed idea in modern history – by both the scientific community and the religious establishments of our time – and its implications are profound. Mainstream religions have stigmatised sun-worship as a primitive aspect of paganism, and mainstream science tells us that all inorganic matter, including our sun and other stars, is ultimately dead, dumb and unconscious.

However, Sams suggests that “the invisible world of spirit, a world that science denies and religion mystifies, is perhaps more real and tangible than we have ever imagined”.

Weaving together new findings from astronomy, the frontiers of chaos theory and other sciences, with the wisdom of mystics from numerous cultures – as well as his own personal insights – Sams creates an extremely compelling case for the notion that all matter in the universe is alive with consciousness and that the sun is nothing less than a celestial deity, living in a galactic community with other stellar beings.

Sams describes a universe that is overflowing with self-organising intelligence and creative design, but without the need for any kind of omniscient, omnipotent intelligent designer. He has helped illuminate my childhood intuition that all aspects of the universe are aware with living spirit, and clarified my hunch that the entire cosmos is a single living organism.

As a child, I had always assumed that everything was conscious. I think that many children, and most Indigenous societies, share this intuition about the natural world, and that deep inside, on some level, we all still remember this – that the sky, the wind, the stars and the Earth are all alive.

I think this book, which is brimming with fascinating scientific facts, little-known historical anecdotes, and a treasure chest of wonderful quotes from mystics and other luminaries that enrich Sams’ thought-provoking ideas, is destined to play a vital role in the elevation of global consciousness.

It’s an unusually insightful and extremely well-integrated discussion about the origins of religion and the evolution of consciousness, and it radically refreshes our view of the world by helping us to recognise that we’re always in the presence of a radiant celestial deity.

Although sun-worshippers may be ridiculed in contemporary society, let us rejoice in our freedom to express these liberating ideas, and interact with the sun however we choose.

David Jay Brown is the author of seven books about the future of science and consciousness, including Conversations on the Edge of the Apocalypse and Mavericks of Medicine.

www.sunofgod.net