The common understanding of our place in the universe is that we are tiny human creatures on a planet in a solar system in the Milky Way galaxy, which is one of billions of galaxies in a vast universe. Anyone who has laid on their back on a summer evening watching shooting stars has experienced this sense of wonder at how small and seemingly insignificant our place is in the universe. There is something to be said for this state of wonder. It is a type of spiritual awe.
But that is only half the story. From a physical point of view we are insignificant short-lived lifeforms in a vast universe. But there is another side of the story, a spiritual side. Together those two sides make one whole, like the Yin-Yang symbol shows two sides of a whole. From a physical point of view we are in the universe, but from a spiritual perspective the universe is in us.
The common understanding of our place in the universe is that we are tiny human creatures on a planet in a solar system in the Milky Way galaxy, which is one of billions of galaxies in a vast universe. Anyone who has laid on their back on a summer evening watching shooting stars has experienced this sense of wonder at how small and seemingly insignificant our place is in the universe. There is something to be said for this state of wonder. It is a type of spiritual awe.
But that is only half the story. From a physical point of view we are insignificant short-lived lifeforms in a vast universe. But there is another side of the story, a spiritual side. Together those two sides make one whole, like the Yin-Yang symbol shows two sides of a whole. From a physical point of view we are in the universe, but from a spiritual perspective the universe is in us.
The common understanding of our place in the universe is that we are tiny human creatures on a planet in a solar system in the Milky Way galaxy, which is one of billions of galaxies in a vast universe. Anyone who has laid on their back on a summer evening watching shooting stars has experienced this sense of wonder at how small and seemingly insignificant our place is in the universe. There is something to be said for this state of wonder. It is a type of spiritual awe.
But that is only half the story. From a physical point of view we are insignificant short-lived lifeforms in a vast universe. But there is another side of the story, a spiritual side. Together those two sides make one whole, like the Yin-Yang symbol shows two sides of a whole. From a physical point of view we are in the universe, but from a spiritual perspective the universe is in us. And this is just as real. These two are actually one.
That might sound strange to our Western ears. We are used to thinking of ourselves as physical creatures inhabiting a physical universe. The universe is seen as physically huge and we are physically small. The physical universe is seen as real. Our interior world on the other hand seems to be simply ideas in our head, no more real than a dream. To say that the universe is within us sounds silly.
Furthermore traditional Christianity reinforces this idea. It says that God is a transcendent almighty deity who created the physical universe at some point in the past and now stands over and above it as ruler and judge. That is a metaphysical dualism. Christianity has historically understood God as separate and different from the world. Any attempt to confuse these two realms – spiritual and material - has been labeled pantheism and banned as heresy.
On the other hand, Eastern religions like Hinduism and Buddhism see the spiritual realm as real and the physical world as maya, often translated illusion. Whereas the West sees the physical as real, the East tends to see the physical as no more real than a dream. In the old days historians of religion used to talk about world-affirming and world-denying religions, although those terms are outdated and misleading.
For those reasons when someone like me, who calls himself a Christian, steps outside the Western worldview and says the universe is within us, people think I have abandoned the West for the East. I have not. I am sticking with Jesus, who said, the Kingdom of God – which is his term for nondual Reality - is both within us and all around us. There is one reality, not two. The universe is in us and we are in it. We may appear to be in the world, but in unitive awareness, when we know who we really are, we see that the universe is within us as well. All is one.
It all comes down to what we mean by “us,” that is “Who are we, realy?” If by “you” or “me” or “I” we mean an individual self associated with a particular body and a personal name and history, then we see ourselves as in the world. But when we examine this carefully we are not sure exactly what this seemingly external world is. Our perception of our physical environment is based on the information we receive from the body’s five senses as processed by the brain. Our brain has created a mental image of the universe based on its senses and reasoning powers. But is this mental image real?
That mental map have been good enough to help humans evolve and multiply and have dominion over other species on the earth, to use the biblical language. But the sensory information we have about the universe is a tiny part of the universe. We can only see a fraction of the light spectrum. We can only hear a tiny fraction of sound waves. We can only smell or taste or feel a tiny fraction of the universe from our tiny planet, even with the help of scientific equipment. Even with all our scientific instruments, we are only aware of three dimensions plus time, but according to string theory there are ten dimensions, which we cannot sense at all.
So our perception of the universe is actually and very incomplete approximation of reality. It is not an overstatement to call our understanding of the universe an illusion, the way a mirage or magic trick or an optical illusion are illusions. I was listening to an interview on the Michael Shermer Show a few month ago. He is the head of the Skeptic Society and Skeptic Magazine. He was interviewing a scientist whose name I cannot remember. But from a scientific perspective the scientist was saying that there is a universe at the other end of our senses, but we don’t really know what it is, except that it is not what we think it is.
That is maya. The world is not what we think it is. Like the Indian metaphor of a man mistaking a rope for a snake. We have created a model of the universe in our minds, and we think it is real but it is not. In actuality it is more illusory than reality. What we think of as the universe is in our heads. So in that sense the universe is within us.
It is also within us in a spiritual sense. So far I have been talking about a separate physical being with a personal sense of self. That self or ego is itself a creation of the mind; that self is not real in anything but a mental sense. As a psychological creation of the brain, the ego is less real than the body. Yet it feels like it is located in this body. It is an illusion within an illusion. In spiritual awakening we see that this self – mental or physical - is not who we really are.
You are the Self with a capital S, by which I mean the real You. This True Self, the non-localized Self, is not inside this body. It-You are much bigger than a body, which is born and dies. You were before the body and will be after the body. Jesus knew this and expressed it this way: Before Abraham was, I AM.
You are not just a tiny part of the universe. You are the Whole. You are the Universe. More than that, you are that in which the universe exists. You were before the universe. You are Reality which gave birth to the universe. Before the universe was, I AM. That is actually what the New Testament says about Jesus. Theologians call it the preexistence of Christ, but it is also true of us.
This is something that can be known directly. All we have to do is shift our perspective from the small self to the Spiritual Self. We are so used to understanding ourselves as inhabiting a tiny body, that we don’t realize we do not have to think in that way. Just expand your perspective outward. Step back and see the bigger picture. It is easy and natural to do. This non-localized seeing is the natural way of seeing in early childhood, and it can be recovered and can become our primary way of seeing. We have forgotten it and forgotten what it means. We just need to remember who we are.
Those early photos of the earth from the moon taken by astronauts are helpful in demonstrating how a shift in perspective can happen. The trip to the moon gave humankind a different perspective of earth. These days the photos of distant galaxies from the Hubble and Webb telescopes help us see from an even bigger perspective. This universe is huge and it is us. Our bodies are made of it and our essence is it. Just expand your perspective until you see that actually the whole universe – including our body and small self - is within our True Self.
Jesus said, “It is I who am the light which is above them all. It is I who am the all. From me did the all come forth, and unto me did the all extend. Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there." Jesus said, “The Kingdom of God is within you.”
The universe is within God and within us when we see that we are one with God. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. That is what John says of Jesus in the beginning of the gospel of John, and that is what Jesus says of us in his prayer at the end of the Gospel of John. He says we are one with Him and God.
In Genesis 1 God created the universe by speaking it into existence. Words are expressed ideas. So the universe is an idea expressed by the mind of God. Science fiction writers speculate that we are living in a simulation. My ten year old grandson says to his friends and us that we are living in a simulation. I don’t know who he gets that from! The Bible says – not that we are a simulation in a computer but a simulation in the Mind of God.
The Bible also says that we have the mind of Christ, which is the Mind of God! “Have this Mind which was also in Christ Jesus,” the apostle Paul said. To have that Mind is spiritual awakening! The universe is the Mind of God, which is the True Self. All is one. One Self. What appears as many – a vast universe - is one, and we are that One. That thou art.