Further strengthening our sense of up-down is the cultural coding worked out over millennia in terms of which the stars and heaven and God are ‘up,’ and the Earth is ‘below.’ Uncountably many generations of humans regarded Earth as the fixed place at the center of the universe above which the heavens turned. … So what do we do now, when our knowledge transcends the genetically and culturally coded assumptions concerning ‘up’? How do we orient ourselves in the universe now that we know a round Earth is sailing around the Sun, and that the Sun is a star similar to the other three hundred billion stars of the Milky Way, and that the idea of ‘up,’ which we might experience on Earth, has nothing to do with the dynamics of the galaxy as it spins its stars in their great orbits?…

As you lie on your back beholding the Milky Way see if you can imaginatively free yourself from seventy million years of conditioning regarding our place in the universe. … Imagine the Earth floating in space, and instead of picturing your own place on the ‘top’ part of Earth, arrange the picture in your mind so that you are on the ‘bottom’ of this visualized Earth.

Now, as you lie there, imagine yourself peering down into the great chasm of the night sky. If your imagination is strong enough you can enter quickly into a new experience. … when all those stars will be experienced as down below, far, far below, and the amazing feeling accompanying this experience is a sense of surprise that you are not falling down there to join them. … you will have entered an experience of the universe that is not just human and not just biological. You will have entered a relationship from a galactic perspective, becoming for a moment a part of the Milky Way Galaxy experiencing what it’s like to be the Milky Way Galaxy.

Excerpt From
Hidden Heart of the Cosmos
Brian Swimme
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