Total Solar Eclipse 2016: How to Watch Online and Spiritual Significance

Total Solar Eclipse is occuring right now.  It is visible in Asia for most part.  It will go across 12 of 34 Indonesian provinces.  It was first visible from Sumatra before being seen across Kalimantan and the islands of Sulawesi and northern Maluku.  It will be total in Indonesia and Central Pacific and only partial in Australia and East Asia.

It will end at sunset in Hawaii (04:34 GMT).

Solar eclipse span (courtesy: BBC)

This is how a solar eclipse actually happens.

How Solar Eclipse occurs

You can check out the latest on the Solar Eclipse at Guardian,  exploratorium, Space.com, Slooh Community Observatory and NASA TV.  There are people who are Solar Eclipse chasers.  Joe Rao is one of them.  Check out how he chases a solar eclipse.

Spiritual Significance of an Eclipse

Eclipse – whether lunar or solar – is accompanied with a special surge in energy.  In terms of how Earth interacts with the moon and the sun, an entire cycle is condensed within a few minutes or hours.  That brings its own benefits and energy dynamics.  Spiritual seekers, who are looking for ways to use anything they can to get awareness, like to use this time as well.

What an eclipse means for a spiritual seeker is this – we pass a whole month in about three hours time. All the different faces of the moon, the twenty-eight faces of the moon, you will see within these three hours; starting from the first day’s moon, to the no moon, to the full moon. So your life is put on fast-forward and essentially, spirituality means just this. It does not mean we are taking a different path; it is just that we are putting our lives on fast-forward. If you are walking on foot, you can see if there are mangoes in the trees and you can pluck them and eat. You can taste the nallikai* on the way. You can picnic, you can pee; this is the journey. But if you are on an airplane, you are not going to pluck mangoes on the way. You don’t even look at them. There may be ten thousand acres of mango groves down there but you don’t even look at them because you are going at a certain speed and elevation. So we are on fast-forward, not that we have anything against mangoes, but we can’t be plucking because of the speed and altitude.
During a lunar eclipse, the moon is on fast-forward. You will see all twenty-eight faces. Everything that happens in a month is happening in a subtle way within a few hours time. When such a fast-forward is happening, many things are changing. This is happening because in terms of energy, the earth’s energy is mistaking the eclipse as a full cycle of the moon.

This Solar Eclipse is special because it comes right after Mahashivaratri.  Mahashivaratri is a time when the energies of the planet are naturally creating an upsurge, which the seekers use anyway.  Coupled with the Solar Eclipse, the time portends great benefits for Sadhana by any Spiritual seeker.

Featured Image Source: Farmer’s Almanac