One Universe - Endless Worlds
The birthing of new worlds
I was 21 years old when I first came across a large book of photographs from the Hubble Space Telescope. At a time when I was wrestling with self-doubt and inner conflict, desperately seeking meaning to my existence, my encounter with those visions of the depths of the universe felt like a window opened to an entirely new dimension. The experience was so profoundly moving that it permanently altered my perception of reality in a way that still affects me to this day.
Perhaps, something within me was recalled to that natural state of wonder that characterizes early childhood, where everything is seen anew, still nameless, and what we will later call 'the world' seems to literally explode in front of our eyes with its immediate magnificence of colors and infinite shapes.
To put it mildly, I was completely mesmerized... absorbed by my personal drama as an adolescent and later as a young adult, I seamed to have forgotten how vast and mysterious the universe was. So for weeks, maybe months, I could look at nothing else. And as I contemplated these images, losing myself in these hypnotic visions of beauty beyond comprehension, a striking realization dawned on me:
If someone from one of those distant worlds were looking back in my direction, they would see something very similar to what I was beholding. Both perspectives would reveal the exact same occurrence: large masses of burning gas illuminating the depths of space, condensing into stars and planets, only to eventually explode into dust again. From either perspective, one could witness the same mysterious manifestation, the entrails of the same singular universe.
The rest is difficult to put into words. While I was looking at those images printed on the pages of that simple book, I realized that I didn’t know who or what I was, any more than I could grasp the fundamental essence of the entity I was looking at. All my beliefs about existence were revealed in their vanity and sheer absurdity when confronted with this silent yet profound demonstration of power. “I” and “It” were both made of the same unfathomable mystery. The universe, whose vastness I could only intuitively sense thanks to those photographs, was perceived as an extension of my own being, and this bodily appearance was just one of its infinite expressions. There was absolutely nothing between “me” and “It” to set us apart. On the contrary, everything I could find that I was made of belonged to it, and there was nothing in it that was foreign to me. In other words, I had the strange feeling that what I was looking at was nothing but my own self. This vision left me in awe, marvelling at the miracle of Being, of having come into existence and being able to perceive, a taste that has never really left me ever since.
***
We seam to like to pretend otherwise, but the truth is that the universe and this life are so much beyond anything conceivable by our limited minds. What is human thought, essentially? An instrument whose function is to draw symbols, representations of the world — and from those symbols — to create new configurations, new ideas, and new concepts. Human thought divides, extracts, compares, and then draws conclusions about everything. But its most basic role is simply to draws maps of the world to help us navigate it more efficiently. No doubt that, over time, it has evolved into an astonishingly refined tool able to produce some incredible wonders (much suffering, also). However, the one thing it can't do is to reveal what exists beyond the maps it has created, beyond its own version of reality, as its very functioning specifically relies on the mappings it produces, never on reality itself. So, substantially, human thought is a reflective, an interpretative and creative tool, but it is by no means a tool that can help us to see reality as it truly is.
The problem for us arises when we stop using thought as the conceptual tool that it is, and start to use it as a reliable source of genuine truth able to define us and the world in our most profound essence, which it isn’t, and never will be.
So, when we delve into the question of our true nature and identity, exploring what we truly are and what is our place in the universe – or, indeed, any other question of fundamental significance – we tend to do so primarily within the confines of the concepts and frameworks established by our social and cultural structures (including science and religion), or in the context of our personal memories and experiences. And while those reference points are indeed necessary to operate within those same socio-cultural structures, they are, in facts, completely misleading us in suggesting that these frameworks can indeed enlighten us about anything beyond themselves. They simply can’t. In short terms, most of our confusion arises because we think our identity, instead of simply seeing it.
When we think, we always do so in separative terms, in terms of a subject and object relationship: “I am here, looking at an object over there.” This is the filter through which we usually experience the totality of what we call reality. But is that filter allowing us the freedom to see genuinely what reality is? Of course not. That perspective is already an added layer of interpretation of what is. So the true question then is: what is there, immediately, before any interpretations, before thought, before language, and thus, before any notion of subjects and objects? What is there before the idea of separation, which is the very root of all thought?
Well, this, again, is where language falls short. But since we need to use words to communicate, all that could be said about reality is that IT IS. This flowing expression of Nature, this existence, this one totality, completely unfathomable, here and now, IS. This One energy in action, that creates and is everything we experience at this moment, IS. We Can’t tell what this energy is. We just know it is here. And it seems to love to be doing what it’s doing, to create endless worlds from the depths of its unknowable nature. And, as unbelievable as it may seem, we are not separated from it. We, too, are made of that same mysterious essence. In facts, we are IT.
If we could only suspend for a moment our futile pursuit for power, our constant battle for knowing and controlling — which are nothing but the symptoms of our deep fear of the unknown, a constant flight from reality — we might also remember that we too are living miracles. We are nothing less than the burning fire that lights up the whole universe, the sight by which the universe experiences itself.
As above, so below.
IMF
