INTRODUCTION

 

In all of God’s marvelous creation there is no object more beautiful and beneficial to mankind than the sun. The sun provides us with light, energy and warmth. It makes plants grow. It regulates the hormonal cycles of animals and humans. It stimulates the production of vitamin D in our skin, which is essential for health, and the secretion of serotonin in the brain, which is essential for well being. But more than this, the ancient people in every culture and religion knew that sunlight was the key to immortality and enlightenment. The ancient Incans, Egyptians, Zoroastrians, Mithrians, Essenes, Therapeuts, Greeks, Romans, and Native Americans would gaze at the sun during certain times of the day, recite special prayers and mantras, and perform mudras or hand gestures. Most present-day archeologists and anthropologists dismiss this as the sun worship of primitive societies. They ignore the fact that the monotheistic solar religions of Zarathustra and Akhenaton liberated men for a short while from bondage to the superstitions of pantheistic religions and created peaceful utopian societies. They also ignore the fact that the great teacher of sungazing, Viracocha, otherwise known as El Dorado or Quetzalcoatl, raised the primitive tribes of the Central and South American jungles into civilized societies that had knowledge of medicine, metallurgy, farming, animal husbandry, writing, engineering, mathematics and astronomy with cities containing hundreds of stone buildings, water and sewer systems and paved roads.

 

One maverick archeologist, Gene Savoy, who discovered several of these lost cities of South America, read the records of this ancient solar science and rediscovered its principles and techniques. However, just as the sungazing Essenes did, Savoy kept this information secret and passed it on by word of mouth only to select initiates of his school.

 

Fortunately, in 1992, a simple, humble man from India, Hira Ratan Manek (HRM) began to teach simple, safe and enjoyable techniques of sun imbibing such as sungazing and sun-charged water. He had spent years researching and experimenting before he felt confident enough to offer this knowledge to the world. Since then he has taught hundreds of thousands of people in over 1300 lectures in a dozen countries across the globe. I attended one of them. If it weren’t for him, this book would not have been written. As he tells people in his lecture, “Sungazing is a cost-free, guru-free practice that will free mankind from mental and physical disease and spiritual ignorance.”

 

Could it be that simple? Just stare at the sun and your worries will melt away, your body will be healed and you’ll become enlightened? It sounded too easy to be true, but as I continued to faithfully sungaze and do the three other practices of sun imbibing, I found myself becoming more carefree and loving, my “incurable” leukemia slowly died, and I have begun a walk with God that is peaceful and exciting at the same time. This was a new paradigm for me and difficult to grasp at first. I had always tried to solve a problem by researching it to death. I had always thought that the word “understanding” meant that when you stand under a problem and see all its underlying parts, you can arrive at a solution. But now my understanding of understanding is this: When you stand under the sun and receive its healing and enlightening rays, you will automatically arrive at the SOLution, for the sun is over all.