That’s what started the whole mess in the first place!
In case anyone thought that I was using acupuncture as an example because I think it is valid, well…let’s just say that I think it is about as valid and proven a technique as sun therapy, and leave it at that.
The dose makes the poison. Even if exposure to full-spectrum light is therapeutically advantageous in some case of depression (what most light treatments are) it does not follow that staring at the sun for extended periods of time is good for a person.
Digitalis is a good substance to treat some heart problems. This does not mean that anyone should start including foxglove salads in their diets.
(To be clear, I am not disagreeing with you, I am just trying to expand the image.)
I am only curious why no one has attempted to discuss this rationally. I never professed to believe the claim that one could live off the sun nutritionally. The effects, however, of looking into the sun and the damage it can cause has been collected by Dr. Andrew T. Young, a professor in the Astronomy Department at San Diego State University. You can read it yourself here:
I’m willing to bet you won’t read it in its entirety. There aren’t any jokes, just research and science. It is not about sungazing but it does describe looking at the sun in a safe angle.
I am surprised that none of you has anything constructive to say and is more than wiling to post on a subject you obviously know nothing about.
It is laughable that you consider yourselves intellectuals.
I’ll know better than to expect constructive dialogue from this forum in the future.
Shame on you.
Why don’t you understand that for every rational being on this planet, the two main aspects of “sunglazing”, staring for several minutes into the sun, and feeding on sunlight, are totally, obviously irrational points which make examining the subject further unnecessary?
I read through your link…which provided numerous cites showing how dangerous prolonged staring at the sun can be. If we joke, it’s because we can’t think of anyone in their right mind who would spend more than a minute of their time before determining that the premise of receiving nutrition by staring at the sun is (warning: tech speak) Bull Goose Loony. There simply aren’t two sides worth looking into, period.
Yawn.
You seriuosly expected to find a bunch of sungazers here on the Dope who would be willing to discuss their positive and negative experiences of sungazing?
No, you did not expect to find sungazers here. You’re only pretending. You are not a serious person, because a serious person, even if they really were actually interested in sungazing, wouldn’t expect to find a bunch of sungazers here. You’d have to go to some sungazing message board instead. Here, I found a sungazing thread on a woo-woo site with a few seconds of googling: Conscious Growth Club – Steve Pavlina
Enjoy your testimonials!
Then you shouldn’t have started by talking about people who do. To quote:
That’s you asking specifically about these nuts who think you can feed off the Sun and look at it without harm. Not about the benefits or lack thereof of just sitting in the Sun.
“Don’t do this, it’s dangerously stupid and can permanently injure you or kill you” is a very constructive thing to say.
Enough. Another moderator already told you that you can’t insult other people in this forum. This is a formal warning.
OK from your OWN link its clear, and the Galileo only observed the sun at sunset (which IS still dangerous, but less so), and gave up entirely when his pupil Benedetto Castellidiscovered the projection technique (whereby the light from the sun is projected from the telescope onto a peice of paper):
Heh. Didja notice the one poster there who said,
Everybody seems to ignore him, and then sometime later he was banned. 
Actually I’m disheartened to see the level of credulity even there. I know, I know.
IF you are a holy man from India, Gase away. In a matter of a few days you will be totally bilind, but still follow the sun from dawn till sunset, seeing nothing else.
Whoever said anything about what anyone here considers themelf? This is the sort of thing someone would say if they came here to yank chains.
As an undergraduate I did an Anthropology project involving raw foodist. One of my informants believed that it would one day be possible for her to stop eating and receive all of her nutritional needs from sunlight and water. Unfortunately, I didn’t really have the opportunity to learn more from her.
…mmmmmm… moon pie…
Geez, Larry, settle down there. You did ask for input from people who had seen the film, no? And I did direct you toward a source mentioned in the same film you referenced that would most likely provide you with replies from “people who had experienced positive or negative results” of this, um, therapy, did I not? Have you even bothered to check with people who publicly proclaim they have experimented with sungazing, or is it just more fun for you to hang around here poking people with your rather unimpressive stick?
Sounds to me like somebody assumed neutrinos were nutritious.
Neutrinos are stuck up bastards. No matter what I do, they just won’t interact with me.
Because the vast majority of posters in this forum have at least a high school education and most of us have at least some college and a few of us have advanced degrees.
What you have posted, (without providing a single bit of evidentiary support), violates any number of biological and physical laws. If you ask us to comment on the “phenomenon,” we are going to simply look at the claims with a rational perspective founded on some basic education about the real world.
If someone came to you and proposed that they had perfected the art of only inhaling, never exhaling, to the point that they could now float into the atmosphere, how much effort would you put into trying to understand their claim or “discussing it rationally”? One supposes that you have a high school education and sufficient intelligence to power up a computer and navigate to the internet. Therefore, one would suppose that you are already aware that inflating your lungs with regular air, just like blowing up a balloon with your lungs, simply compresses normal air into a heavier form and that it will not float, just as a balloon blown up by mouth does not float. You need a gas that is actually lighter than air, (hydrogen, helium, methane), to float and you need to displace enough volume of the air to counter your weight and your lungs are certainly not large enough to do that. What sort of “discussion” would you choose to have with a proponent of "inhaling to the point of floating away?
Why should the posters, here, react differently to your odd claims?
You are also wrong to claim that no one has “attempted to discuss this rationally.” Why are you ignoring the post that noted that the amount of energy that could be absorbed by the eye was orders of magnitude less that that required to animate a body?
On the contrary. The posts in this thread indicate that the participants are very much aware of the topic: they are aware that it is bullshit and they understand why it is bullshit. Do you? Why have you completely ignored the serious answers that were provided? If you wondered why everyone was being so dismissive, why did you not simply ask for a clear explanation regarding energy transfer from the sun to humans? You opened the thread with a claim that you did not necessarily believe the kooks making the claims, but all your subsequent posts have either attempted to defend the kooks or attacked the posters on this board. That gives rise to the strong suspicion that you really are a believer. Since the claim is ludicrous, physically and biologically, your apparent defense of the kooks suggests that you are less interested in the facts than in spreading their “message.” That, too, will invite more than a bit of humorous response. If you really are out spreading their message, then the shame would fall on you.
Okay, so obviously the sun-eaters are idiots. Moving on, I followed a couple Wikipedia links and ended up at the Breatharian Institute.
These are folks who think that you can get all your nutrition from air, eventually. As for mocking them, well, some people you can’t make fun of, you just quote 'em: