To the left is the Sun, the nearest star to us. It is about 865,000 miles in diameter, more than 115 times the diameter of the Earth. At the arrow tip is a simulated Earth, to show relative size. If it seems the Earth must surely be the wrong size, you're absolutely right: it should be half as big! But any smaller would be invisible. Click on the Earth to get a more recognisable image.

The Sun is about 93 million miles away, and so its light, travelling at 186,000 miles per second, takes over eight minutes to reach us. This light and heat has been enough to nurture all life ever existing on Earth. It is hard to imagine something pouring out equal amounts of such radiation in all directions over such a massive distance. But, as stars go, this is average: astronomers found a star 25,000 light years away, in our own galaxy, shining with 10 million times the power of our Sun. On your screen are perhaps a million or more "pixels" or tiny dots. If the power of our Sun was one pixel, this star's would be ten video screens.

The next nearest star to us is about 40 light years distant: to picture this distance, imagine the Earth the size of a full stop on this page. That star is now no bigger than a small marble, more than 310 kilometers away. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, comprises some 100,000 stars, spaced out in a similar way.

The above diagram represents relative distance from the Sun (coloured inner disk only) to the Earth (pixel at right). The Sun is drawn to approximate scale but the Earth is ten times actual size. Light travels this distance in roughly 8.3 minutes.
All humans on Earth would fit in a cube 2.5 miles per side: no more than a tiny mountain on the surface of a tiny planet. It is humbling to keep all this in mind. Religions all contain this fundamental truth: that whatever talents, abilities, wealth or achievements man has, they amount to nothing in the real scheme of things.

To emphasise this, religions stress humility in action, prayer, and the resignation of individual will to a Divine will whose scope is so vast and whose sphere of activity is so immense, that man's intellect cannot fathom it, just as the human eye cannot bear the splendour of the Sun: it would be blinded even millions of miles away.

This attitude can promote mystical experience, as it tends to deflate the ego. The mystical vision reveals all life as part of an awesome splendour, and the enormity of the Universe and the intelligence behind it become apparent. This is the saving grace of mankind: though physically no more than a speck on a grain of sand, when looking within she can access a kingdom whose domain is the entire expanse of creation: an experience so staggering that all mystics were at a loss to describe it. Thus a common religious theme: that the power behind the Universe is vast and bewilderingly complex: able to act in all places and at all times with ease, competent to wield truly awesome power.

This is the only kind of intelligence which could conceivably have woven the fantasic complexity of the brain, evolve it through successive generations, and maintain its health (despite interference and oppostion from human willpower) during the course of an individual's life. Bearing in mind the extremely restricted understanding of size of the physical world current at that time, how could the religious founders of antiquity have formulated such a concept of Divinity without some inner cosmic experience?

This image is a representation of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, with a rough guide as to where our Sun might be inside it. No photograph actually exists of it, because to take it, the camera would have to be outside of it!

The distance across it is roughly 100,000 light years. That is, light travelling at 186,000 miles (about 7.5 times around the earth) every second, would take 100,000 years to get from one side of it to the other!

It does not really stand to reason that such mighty intelligence would be egotistically demanding worship from such a tiny race. More likely the frame of mind which worship encourages might be useful for bypassing the normally all-pervading human ego. This would allow the brain to become more in tune with a reality which would normally be far away from our thoughts, concerned as we usually are with our private lives, in a fractional microcosm of a truly vast arena.

Could any being capable of producing such beauty on every scale, microcosmic or galactic, be be interested in pitting one group of devotees against another, or depriving one part of the race to feed the other part? This sort of oversight would be unlikely even for an error-prone being such as a human, to say nothing of an infinite intelligence.

The Universe continues with or without our attentions, but, according to religion, should we decide to contemplate it, the requirement is to be humble and open minded: many spiritual and creative geniuses were not well educated, but faithfully devoted to their beliefs or craft. Perhaps if the brain is too overloaded with learning or worldly preoccupations, or continually damaged from self-inflicted stress, the resources are no longer available to upgrade the brain towards higher consciousness. If so, it means the basis on which civilisation is now built is wrong, since it is at odds with Nature's design, which explains the upheavals now being felt all over the Earth. Since everything in the Universe seems to have a logical cause, there must also be a reason behind the scenes of natural devastation, unrest, warfare and affliction which surround the human race today.

Lastly, a cloud of galaxies. Nobody knows how many galaxies there are in the Universe, but estimates usually exceed 100 billion. This photo represents an area of the sky the size of a grain of sand held at arm's length, taken by the Hubble orbiting telescope.

Among the galaxies are truly amazing events: stars so dense that one teaspoonful would weigh 10,000 tons. Binary stars rotating 1,000 times a second. Black holes generating such ferocious gravity that nothing, not even light, can escape. Stars seemingly older than the Universe itself (est. 15 billion years). Worlds far beyond all human measurement.

Despite this unimaginable scale, the last word still belongs to the brain: the total possible different connections of neurons, in a single human brain, number more than all the atoms in the Universe. This is the priceless device we all carry about, but which, sometimes, does not even rate a second thought!