Microcosm & Macrocosm

Feeling too small?
Read this….

Contemplations on Microcosm & Macrocosm. 🪷
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Where is exactly the boundary where the inner world of a human body connects with the environment?
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From a philosophical perspective of many traditions (Hindu texts or ancient Greeks or even Alchemists), there is no real boundary as everything is interconnected:
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« As is the human body,
So is the cosmic body.
As is the human mind,
So is the common mind.
As is the microcosm,
So is the macrocosm.
As is the atom,
So is the universe ».
Say The Upanishads.
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Microcosm means ‘little world’ in ancient greek. Greeks applied it to man/woman. They considered humans as a world in miniature (softly getting validated by quantum physics by the way). Macrocosm means the earth or the whole universe.
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So in other words (at least from the point of view from these traditions) each of us is a microcosm of the macrocosm.
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In my yoga classes, I often refer to the notion of an unique expression (you or I in a body) that emerges while nourishing the common Consciousness stream we are all part of (whatever name we give, God, Universe or Consciousness). We are a human body as much as we are not, as we are also everything.
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When you move, everything else moves and vice versa. Always remember that.
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Now, beyond the philosophy, how about the « physical » boundary between a human body and its environment? The answers are not too straight forward.
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Some might say that it is the skin, which represents the human protective layer against all the negative physical influences of the external environment.
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Some might think of the respiratory tract, because through it we breathe in the outside air and get the much-needed oxygen that our body needs for various types of metabolic processes.
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The eye, such a small organ with incredible properties that conjures up all the beauty of the world around us?
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And what about the brain, and all those psychic and mental events that intertwine between the outside world and our cerebral brain?
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If we combine all of this, the invisible and the physical armor of our body, we get a human, who is so small compared to the Universe (which is by definition the infinite space that surrounds us), and yet so great for us in our world of the microcosm.
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And, that’s the paradox of the play of Life: you are small as much as you are not. You are defined matter as much as you are not. In the very « finite » holds the infinite (and vice versa).
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As we move on the path of Life and Self Knowing, we are likely not to need any firm answer to some of these questions, as the invitation is to LIVE but also because in many of these enquiries, there is not a clear universal truth as the Universal Truth keeps exploring itself and that’s a beautiful mystery too.
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The field is open for each of us to make sense of the « finite within the infinite » (or the other way around) without becoming too heady about it.
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Nonetheless, my wish for us all is to rest somewhere in the middle where the infinitely small of the microcosm and the immensity of the macrocosm meets, as moments between two eternities.
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Lovingly small & big.