The sacred inspires awe and reverence. You feel you should be quiet. You also feel small, insignificant, and you are humbled. Your ego disappears. It’s no longer about you. And you’re open to being changed by the sacred.

In the presence of the sacred, you feel aspirational. You become aware that you are more than your physical appearance. In the presence of the sacred, the spiritual part of your humanity rises to the fore, allowing you to see with new eyes. And you have a spiritual experience.

It happened while I was on Mauna Kea, standing outside one of the telescopes after the sun had just set, waiting for the heavens to reveal the millions of stars that inhabit the sky. I was with a small crew of filmmakers, waiting for the darkness to arrive. We were quiet, introspective, as the darkness slowly enveloped us. And then, I heard a sound I had never heard before. Eeeeeeh … it was the sound of a massive telescope opening up its “eyes” to scan the sky, a sound that reminded me of the beginning of a traditional chant. The eerie sound gave me chicken skin.

Let The Mountain Speak Film – Hawaiian Version from Vilsoni Hereniko on Vimeo.

The sound’s likeness to the beginning of a chant also gave me a new awareness: scientific exploration of the heavens is a sacred act for astronomers, as it must have been for my Polynesian ancestors stargazing on double-hulled canoes as they traversed the Pacific ocean in search of new lands. This was, and is, awe inspiring searching, one that requires the clearest vision to be able to see into the unknown.

Is it possible then to see Mauna Kea as an elder hoping to acquire a new pair of “eye glasses” that will allow it to see further into the night sky than it can ever see without them?

It is an ancient belief that the land is like a human being, and has “eyes.” It also has mana, agency, and can make us tremble before it, such as when its hot molten lava causes us to flee in fear. Enveloped in the mana of a sacred mountain at night, humans need protection, more so than a sacred mountain, because the mountain has teeth too and can bite, should it wish or want to do so.

People are, or should be, the best stewards of a sacred mountain, but not its master. After all, people belong to the land; the land does not belong to people. This is the wisdom of the ages: inconvenient today, but a moonbeam in our darkest night.

Screenshot/Let The Mountain Speak

And so I ask again: is it possible to see scientific exploration into the sky as also “sacred” to our collective humanity and aspirations, necessary for the survival of our children’s children? As we dig deeper into our past, could we also reach out further into the future? Surely the future will be very different, not identical, to the one we inhabit now? And how could we prepare our children’s children for that unknown future, one that may require them to journey further than their ancestors ever did into the unknown, this time into the sky perhaps, to inhabit another planet so they too could survive?

Seeing with new eyes makes it possible for us to see above, as well as below, to see land as well as ocean, to see beyond earth to wood, to metal and steel, to see behind, alongside, and even between. To see between past and present, between the ancient and the modern, to see relationships and connections, and to become wise to the knowledge that everything, and everyone, is interconnected.

It is a seeing that shifts perspectives, a seeing that is not about “us” and “them,” a seeing that is all inclusive, a seeing that includes all of humanity.