The diameter of the Earth is one-millionth that of the Solar System; but the diameter of the Solar System is only perhaps one forty­ millionth that of the Milky Way. When in our own system we find such relationships, it is not between sun and planets, but between sun and satellites of planets. That is to say, by analogy of scale and mass, we should expect the Solar System to be revolving about some greater entity, which in its turn was revolving about the centre of the Milky Way; just as the Moon revolves about the Earth, which in turn revolves about the Sun. What and where is this ‘sun’ of our Sun? Several attempts have been made to discern a ‘local’ system within the Milky Way, particularly by Charlier who in 1916 seemed to have established such a group 2000 light-years across and with its centre several hundred light-years away in the direction of Argo. If we study our immediate surroundings in the galaxy, we find an interesting gradation of stars, two of which are suggestive from this point of view.

For the most brilliant object in the heavens, after those within the Solar System itself, is of course the double star Sirius. This consists of an immense radiant sun, 26 times more brilliant than our own, which circles in a fifty year period with a white dwarf as big as Jupiter and 5,000 times denser than lead. The mass of the light star being two and a half times that of our Sun, and that of the dark one equivalent to it, the influence upon the solar system of this starry pair, which lie at less than nine light-years remove, must certainly far exceed that of any other extra-solar body that we can think of. By physical distance as by radiance and mass a Sirian system would seem in some way to fill the excessive gap between the cosmoses of the Solar System and the Milky Way. Indeed, the distance from the Sun to Sirius, one million times the distance from the earth to the Sun, falls naturally into the scale of cosmic relationships mentioned, and provided nineteenth century astronomy with an excellent unit of celestial measurement, the siriometer, now unfortunately abandoned.

No astronomical data contradict the possibility that the Solar System circles about Sirius, in the course of the latter’s circuit of the Milky Way, as Kant believed. For such a circling would only noticeably alter the position in the heavens of Sirius itself and of two or three other near stars, and in a periodicity of some hundreds of thousands of years this could easily pass unnoticed. In fact, we have definite evidence to show that such is the case. As the ancient Egyptians observed, the apparent motion of Sirius, measured by its rising with the sun, is a little less than that of the apparent motion of all the other stars, which is recognised in the precession of the equinoxes. Whereas the general star mass rises twenty minutes later on a given day each year, Sirius rises only eleven minutes later. This corresponds to the difference in apparent motion between points outside a circle and the centre of the circle itself, when observed from a moving point on its circumference, just as, in a landscape seen from a moving car, far and near objects seem to run past each other.

From such an observation we have good reason to believe that our Sun does circle about Sirius. And if we suppose the generally accepted figure of 20 km/s for the sun’s motion through space to be correct, then this circling would require 800,000 years. In other words, our Sun would make some 250 revolutions about its greater sun for every full circuit of the Milky Way. Another very striking fact appears to confirm the idea of a local star system with Sirius as centre. If we take the great familiar stars within say forty light-years of the Sun, Sirius, Procyon, Altair, Fomalhaut, Pollux, Vega and so on, we find that all but two lie within 15° of the same plane. There is only one likely explanation of this: that all the near stars revolve about a common centre, and that this section is the ecliptic upon which all their orbits lie. Supposing Sirius to be the sun of these suns, then our Sun, curiously enough, appears to occupy a similar place in that system to that occupied by the earth in the solar one. And if this is so, then the Sirian system may be regarded as almost exactly a million times greater in diameter than the solar system, as the latter is a million times greater in diameter than the earth, and the earth a million times greater in diameter than an ordinary house.

– from Rodney Collin’s “Theory of Celestial Influence” (1954) Incidentally, all these Gurdjieff people are the most fantastic spiritual materialists. This, from the same book, is typical:

We find that in studying light we are in fact very close to the nature of that amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle of which Dante spoke. One of the most striking qualities of this light is that it is undiminishable and eternal. No fraction of the light of a single candle is lost even when it reaches the outskirts of the solar system: it is only diffused around that prodigious circumference. Moreover, this process of diffusion of light without loss goes on indefinitely. As we know from observation of the most distant galaxies, it is still going on five hundred million years after its first emission. All the light which was then radiated by such galaxies still exists, though now at this immense remove. If light can diffuse and endure undiminished for half-a-billion years, it can surely do so for ever. This means that all light, from a candle or from a super-sun, sooner or later fills the entire universe. Light is undiminishable, eternal and omnipresent. In every religion that existed these qualities have been recognized as divine. So that we are forced to the conclusion that light — actual sensible light — is indeed the direct vehicle of divinity: it is the consciousness of God.

It is clear that all life on Earth is, as it were, a condensation of electronic or solar radiation. At the same time the creation of such life does not imply a loss of the electronic nature of matter, but its temporary locking into forms of varying shape and of greater or less density. Within these forms, the electrons, with their affinity for the Sun, still exist, and in fact, all these forms are made of such electrons. Further, when these forms ‘die’, as we say, it merely means that the magnetic field creating a certain individual shape is broken, the heavier or earthly elements composing it fall away, and the original hydrogen atoms are released. Most probably these hydrogen atoms again break up into electrons, and in this state resume their free passage throughout the Solar System which was temporarily interrupted by their incorporation into bodies. That is to say, the energy incorporated into physical bodies, when the latter die, becomes light again. If we remember the conclusion we just came to about the nature of light, we can even say that, physical bodies disintegrating, their matter returns to the divine state. Only the proof of this thesis is hampered by the fact that normally we can only conceive of consciousness attached to physical bodies, or to matter in cellular state. And it could only be established satisfactorily by the actual carrying over of consciousness into matter in electronic state.