You are grand on a cosmic scale
Let's begin with Neil deGrasse Tyson, who gives a short scientific sermon on the poetic wonder of what the study of astrophysics reveals about the Cosmos and us; and how knowing our place in the Universe can enlarge our sense of self rather than diminish it:
"You are not just a drop in the ocean, you are the mighty ocean in a drop" ~ Jalal ad-Din Rumi.
“We are the local embodiment of a Cosmos grown to self-awareness. We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least consciousness arose…. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to the species, not just to the planet, but to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring." ~ Carl Sagan
"Inside every organ, cell, and piece of DNA in our bodies lie over 3.5 billion years of the history of life. ... Written inside us is the birth of the stars, the movement of heavenly bodies across the sky, even the origin of days themselves. ... by smashing the smallest atoms and surveying the largest galaxies, exploring rocks on the highest mountains and in the deepest seas, and coming to terms with the DNA inside every species alive today, we uncover a sublimely beautiful truth. Within each of us lie some of the most profound stories of all" (The Universe Within by Neil Shubin; Prologue).
To gain some perspective on this quote by Neil Shubin, and for a fun ride, see http://scaleofuniverse.com.
I highly recommend the video titled, The Universe Within by theRSAorg (Published on Feb 20, 2013): In this video, "Pioneering paleontologist Neil Shubin reveals the deep connections between the cosmos and the human body -- from today right back to the Big Bang" (YouTube).
After watching the video linked above by Neil Shubin; if you fast forward to nine minutes into the following video by RSA Animate, titled ThePower of Networks by Manuel Lima, you will learn how our brain's neural network is similar to the network formation of galaxies. This fills me with a profound sense of awe and wonder. The following poem is one way of expressing the beauty all around and within us:
With beauty all around me, I walk.
In beauty, I walk.
With beauty before me, I walk.
With beauty behind me, I walk.
With beauty above me, I walk.
With beauty below me, I walk.
With beauty all around me, I walk.
With beauty within me, I walk. …
~ Navajo Night Song
You are an evolutionary success linked to all life forms on the planet
In this post I will presume the reader has some understanding of science, specifically evolution. To begin, consider the fact that you are the result of that winning sperm that began your development. You are billions of elements working as one; atoms in motion and eternal energy changing your form moment to moment. Pick up a biology book and examine your structure, your muscles, your veins and arteries; you are a magnificent mammal built to overcome obstacles and capable of achieving some of your wildest dreams. And while you are tied to this evolutionary tree of mammals you are unique. There is only one Elvis, one Jack Nicholson, or one Abraham Lincoln, and there is only one YOU. There will never be another arrangement of atoms, stardust, and DNA exactly like you. The DNA sequence that formed from your parents coupling has formed a one of a kind being. Your genome is unique, your personality is unique, what you create in life will be unique. When people experience you they are lucky and you are lucky to know them, as two unique forms of stardust and power enjoying life on this blue planet.
In the following excerpt from the first chapter of his book Incognito, David Eagleman writes:
The molecules in your body are like complex "machines" working in harmony; see the short video (about nine minutes) below by Drew Berry, titled: Animations of unseeable biology ...
Science reveals that you are a biological orchestra, a symphony of life. You are also a universe within the Universe, right now your body is full of living organisms, system after system, functioning without your awareness. You digest food turning it into energy without even thinking about it. This complex interplay of biology and physics within us is no less miraculous than the alignment of the planets.
If you watched a home movie going backward in time revealing your lineage you'd start to see your human relative’s appearance start to appear less human and more ape like. If you kept watching you would eventually end up at the first single celled organism. This can help us realize that everything around us, from a tree to a dog, has a common ancestor with us on the evolutionary tree of life. This can give us a profound sense of interconnectedness and familial oneness. Now keep watching that home movie of your lineage and watch the formation of the earth, the formation of our galaxy, and the birth of our universe. Now fast forward again to now. You are part of that grand universe story.
We are one with the tree of life
You are the ancestor of an earthly lineage spanning billions of years of successful adaptation and modification via natural selection. Like a car company producing model after model until it stream lines its latest replica to be faster and more maneuverable than the rest, with its own built in computer navigation system and other advanced technology; in a similar way, the universe and natural selection has produced you. You are a walking DNA success-system, built to overcome and flourish. Your body is part of a larger body of life going back millions of years. Darwin compared the evolution of life to a tree. Darwin wrote:
The affinities of all the beings of the same class have sometimes been represented by a great tree. I believe this simile largely speaks the truth. The green and budding twigs may represent existing species; and those produced during former years may represent the long succession of extinct species. … As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever-branching and beautiful ramifications.
The amazing video (only about six minutes) below illustrates the great tree of life of which Darwin used as a metaphor for the growing diversity of life on the planet:
If video does not play see the following link. This video was embedded from YouTube with the original source being: http://www.wellcometreeoflife.org/video/
A word on your eternal essence
Your essence was forged from stars. We are the elements of eternity as cosmic beings flowing in time.
There is also an invisible phenomena that sustains your being; scientists call it energy (See"Life is Energy" on page 49 of the book Life 101); psychologists call it “consciousness,” some call it the vital principle, the life-force, or animating force; and religionists speak of a literal soul while others use the term soul metaphorically to refer to your psyche, personality type, or ineffable life-essence. What I understand from science is that I am not the form I am now any more than I am the form I was as a baby, a child, or teenager. This bodily form is composed of cells that die and new cells emerge regularly as I become a different form. I age and change and yet my consciousness and memory bank remains constant. I am a continuity of changing matter and form grounded in a consistent stream of consciousness.
The word “spirit” literally means wind or breath. So we all live and move and have our being by breathing the same air which is produced by the earth from which we emerged as sentient beings. So yes we have "spirit" for sure in that we have the breath of life, the in-spiriting (in-breath) process of breathing; as well as an animating "life force" or DNA that sustains our being as citizens of the earth.
I have no problem with dreamy ways of contemplating our essence (that space between the neutron and the electron in the atom, etc.), be it from a scientific or mythic perspective; as long as we recognize the difference between the two. I will add that there are mysteries both science and religion probably cannot fathom. Scientists speak of dark matter that is just a term to refer to a mystery, and religionists speak of a soul but are unable to make sense of how it fits into the working of the body and are unable to measure or quantify it.
As for myself I choose to say our essence or consciousness is a mystery and leave it at that. I prefer to just speak of the miracle of our existence and how wondrous it is that there is a universe at all. I also think we know a lot about who we are from science but mythic dream-speak is often consoling and inspiring to many. Thus I hold a pragmatic perspective: whatever personal belief on the issue of the soul works for you is fine with me; just don’t let your private beliefs interfere with the public pursuit of scientific advancement.
Our mammalian self and our cosmic self
Our mammalian self is our biological nature, our genetic heritage on the tree of life from which we grew into being as earthlings (citizens of the earth). Our cosmic self is the star dust and processes of the earth and energy that forms you. A science-based approach to life seeks to realize that our cosmic self and mammalian self are one. I wrote the following to remind me of this uplifting realization:
I am large – I’m made from the essence of stars and power
I am vast – I’m in the universe and the universe is in me
I am infinite – a cosmic form flowing from a formless source of energy
I am powerful – I contain in my DNA a long history of successful ancestors
I am a wondrous – a thousand brain synapses rooted together in harmony
I am special – a unique human being with psychological depth and potentiality
I am complex – a condominium of symbiotic life living within my mammalian body
I am magnificent – a cathedral of biological complexity and architecture
I am miraculous – a resulting relationship of sexual union grown to fruition
I am endless potential – a drop in the sands of time, the odds of a mountain
I am connected – to some Mystery larger than myself and beyond my conception
I also wrote the following to convey our interconnectedness:
We are one with the Universe and Ultimate Reality
We are all related, from the trees to the chimpanzee
Everything is interconnected, at one with the All.
When I wrote the above I had in mind Darwin’s ever branching evolutionary tree of life, as well as the science of ecology, symbiosis, atoms, and DNA; all of which is what forms us all, from the tree to the chimpanzee. By referring to “the All” I am referring to the Transcendent, i.e. the ineffable mystery of Ultimate Reality.
We are the universe in form, an orchestra of cells functioning in harmony. Our brains are literally “thinking meat” that can map the human genome and fly to the moon! We are a "magical" species that can record our voice, memory and images in inch by inch technology; we can use our phone or email to basically telepathically communicate with other bipedal hominids across the globe; we can drive a car for miles in minutes or fly from city to city, state to state.
With one decisive action we can chart a course of innovation and progress changing our lives forever. We are emerging cells in the body of life; our genome contains the information of a billion prior species that passed on their feedback and successful adaptations into our unconscious instincts we take for granted everyday. Billions and billions of prior species have died just so that we can perform the most rudimentary acts as a human, yet we complain about trifles and forget that we sit atop an evolutionary tree of skeletal remains that provided our genes the means to flourish.
We have at our fingertips the fixed and dependable laws of physics that in all probability never lead us astray; drop a ball and gravity acts upon it everyday, every time; offering us complete trust and dependability as we become scientific magicians wielding our destiny with the laws of nature acting in harmony with our will. Our ancestor's hard work, the laws of physics, and change all provide us the power to stay alive and thrive. Yet we too often bind ourselves by unsubstantiated fears and allow self-doubt to squelch our dreams, suppress our healthy desires, and limit our human potentiality.
When will we awake to our own grandeur as the universe represented in flowing form within a biosphere of exponential power. We are like the acorn with the potential to grow into a mighty oak tree, the grass that pushes through a crack in concrete; we are part of the infinite reality from which we sprang; we are the universe.
We truly are magnificent manifestations of that Emerging Mystery at the heart of the universe. When we awaken to our grand lineage and accept our mammalian nature we can better merge with the cosmic cycles and unity of the earth; as no longer separate "egos" but one humanity and multicellular organisms that are interlinked with the grand lineage of life on earth and the history of our universe. We truly are cosmic beings of stardust and power.
There is a sense of awe, beauty, and wholeness in this view of humanity that transcends the ego-centered "little self" as much as possible; as we seek to realize more and more our "Cosmic Self," as one species connected to the Whole of Reality.
With beauty before me, I walk.
With beauty behind me, I walk.
With beauty above me, I walk.
With beauty below me, I walk.
With beauty all around me, I walk.
With beauty within me, I walk. …
~ Navajo Night Song
You are an evolutionary success linked to all life forms on the planet
In this post I will presume the reader has some understanding of science, specifically evolution. To begin, consider the fact that you are the result of that winning sperm that began your development. You are billions of elements working as one; atoms in motion and eternal energy changing your form moment to moment. Pick up a biology book and examine your structure, your muscles, your veins and arteries; you are a magnificent mammal built to overcome obstacles and capable of achieving some of your wildest dreams. And while you are tied to this evolutionary tree of mammals you are unique. There is only one Elvis, one Jack Nicholson, or one Abraham Lincoln, and there is only one YOU. There will never be another arrangement of atoms, stardust, and DNA exactly like you. The DNA sequence that formed from your parents coupling has formed a one of a kind being. Your genome is unique, your personality is unique, what you create in life will be unique. When people experience you they are lucky and you are lucky to know them, as two unique forms of stardust and power enjoying life on this blue planet.
In the following excerpt from the first chapter of his book Incognito, David Eagleman writes:
Take a good hard look at yourself in the mirror. Churning beneath your dashing good looks lies a hidden universe of networked machinery. The machinery includes a sophisticated scaffolding of interlocking bones, a netting of sinewy muscles, a good deal of specialized fluid, and a collaboration of internal organs chugging away in darkness to keep you alive. A sheet of high-tech self-healing sensory material that we call skin seamlessly covers up your machinery in a pleasing package.
And then there's your brain. Three pounds of the most complex material we've discovered in the universe. This is the mission control center that drives the whole operation, gathering intelligence information through small portals in the armored bunker of the skull.
Your brain is built of cells called neurons and glia--hundreds of billions of them. Each one of these cells is as complicated as a city. Each cell contains the entire human genome and traffics billions of molecules in intricate economies. Each cell sends electrical pulses to other cells, up to hundreds of times per second. If you represented each of these trillions and trillions of pulses in your brain by a single photon of light, the sum total would be blinding.
The cells are connected to one another in a network of such staggering complexity that it bankrupts human language and necessitates new kinds of mathematics. A typical neuron makes about 10,000 connections to neighboring neurons, which means that there are more connections in a few cubic centimeters of brain tissue than there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy.
The three pound organ in your skull--with its pink consistency of jello--is an alien kind of computational material. It is composed of miniaturized, self-configuring parts, and it vastly outstrips anything we've dreamt of building. So if you ever feel lazy or dull, take heart: you're the busiest, brightest thing on the planet.
Ours is an incredible story. As far as anyone can tell, we're the only system on the planet so complex that we've thrown ourselves headlong into the game of deciphering our own programming language. Imagine that your desktop computer began to control its own peripheral devices, removed its own cover and pointed its webcam at its own circuitry. That's us.
And what we've discovered by peering under the hood ranks among the most significant intellectual developments of our species: the recognition that the innumerable facets of our behavior, thoughts, and experience are inseparably yoked to a vast, wet, chemical-electrical network called the nervous system. The machinery is utterly alien to us, and yet, somehow, it is us.
Source: http://www.eagleman.com/incognito
The molecules in your body are like complex "machines" working in harmony; see the short video (about nine minutes) below by Drew Berry, titled: Animations of unseeable biology ...
Science reveals that you are a biological orchestra, a symphony of life. You are also a universe within the Universe, right now your body is full of living organisms, system after system, functioning without your awareness. You digest food turning it into energy without even thinking about it. This complex interplay of biology and physics within us is no less miraculous than the alignment of the planets.
If you watched a home movie going backward in time revealing your lineage you'd start to see your human relative’s appearance start to appear less human and more ape like. If you kept watching you would eventually end up at the first single celled organism. This can help us realize that everything around us, from a tree to a dog, has a common ancestor with us on the evolutionary tree of life. This can give us a profound sense of interconnectedness and familial oneness. Now keep watching that home movie of your lineage and watch the formation of the earth, the formation of our galaxy, and the birth of our universe. Now fast forward again to now. You are part of that grand universe story.
We are one with the tree of life
You are the ancestor of an earthly lineage spanning billions of years of successful adaptation and modification via natural selection. Like a car company producing model after model until it stream lines its latest replica to be faster and more maneuverable than the rest, with its own built in computer navigation system and other advanced technology; in a similar way, the universe and natural selection has produced you. You are a walking DNA success-system, built to overcome and flourish. Your body is part of a larger body of life going back millions of years. Darwin compared the evolution of life to a tree. Darwin wrote:
The affinities of all the beings of the same class have sometimes been represented by a great tree. I believe this simile largely speaks the truth. The green and budding twigs may represent existing species; and those produced during former years may represent the long succession of extinct species. … As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever-branching and beautiful ramifications.
The amazing video (only about six minutes) below illustrates the great tree of life of which Darwin used as a metaphor for the growing diversity of life on the planet:
If video does not play see the following link. This video was embedded from YouTube with the original source being: http://www.wellcometreeoflife.org/video/
From this video illustration we see that we are one with the fish and the bee, the lion and the
centipede, one diversifying stream of life; a living body of transformation. We
are emboldened when we realize that we are connected to ancestors spanning millions of years. We are part of the earth community, this grand symphony of diversity in unity, an interconnected family of life. As Darwin put it:
"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several
powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that,
whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity,
from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have
been, and are being, evolved."
Elsewhere Darwin wrote:
Elsewhere Darwin wrote:
"When I view all beings not as special creations, but as the
lineal descendants of some few beings which
lived long before the first bed of the Silurian system was deposited, they seem
to me to become ennobled" (The Origin of Species, page 488).
Our brain bears the stamp of our connection to the tree of life
Another thing the tree of life does is help us realize our own nature. You have inherited certain inclinations from your ancestors. This is best illustrated by the brain's anatomy and evolution. See the short video below:
Also check out brain rules website by John Medina where he provides a short audio slide presentation, titled "Survival, #2 the brain evolved too" at http://www.brainrules.net/survival?scene=. In segment 5 of this presentation on the brain he provides an illustration of the three basic parts of our brain and explains briefly the function of each part.
When you realize that your drives and impulses (the function of your reptilian brain) were inherited from your past ancestors; and helped in your survival and the replication of your genes; you can learn to appreciate them as natural instincts and also control them with your higher brain (your cortex). We do this all the time in civil society; for example, we harness our reptilian brain instincts to compete with other males in other "tribes" by channeling this drive in sports.
This provides an even more profound awareness of our interconnection with other life forms on the planet. For we share the same instincts to eat, survive, and have sex, etc. We share emotions with them too. We are related to our mammalian cousins in more ways than one, from our similarity in DNA to our emotions and instincts. Your dog or cat is not a "machine" (as some thought of them before Darwin), he or she is your cousin, your kin, your friend. We are one family.
Your essence was forged from stars. We are the elements of eternity as cosmic beings flowing in time.
There is also an invisible phenomena that sustains your being; scientists call it energy (See"Life is Energy" on page 49 of the book Life 101); psychologists call it “consciousness,” some call it the vital principle, the life-force, or animating force; and religionists speak of a literal soul while others use the term soul metaphorically to refer to your psyche, personality type, or ineffable life-essence. What I understand from science is that I am not the form I am now any more than I am the form I was as a baby, a child, or teenager. This bodily form is composed of cells that die and new cells emerge regularly as I become a different form. I age and change and yet my consciousness and memory bank remains constant. I am a continuity of changing matter and form grounded in a consistent stream of consciousness.
The word “spirit” literally means wind or breath. So we all live and move and have our being by breathing the same air which is produced by the earth from which we emerged as sentient beings. So yes we have "spirit" for sure in that we have the breath of life, the in-spiriting (in-breath) process of breathing; as well as an animating "life force" or DNA that sustains our being as citizens of the earth.
I have no problem with dreamy ways of contemplating our essence (that space between the neutron and the electron in the atom, etc.), be it from a scientific or mythic perspective; as long as we recognize the difference between the two. I will add that there are mysteries both science and religion probably cannot fathom. Scientists speak of dark matter that is just a term to refer to a mystery, and religionists speak of a soul but are unable to make sense of how it fits into the working of the body and are unable to measure or quantify it.
As for myself I choose to say our essence or consciousness is a mystery and leave it at that. I prefer to just speak of the miracle of our existence and how wondrous it is that there is a universe at all. I also think we know a lot about who we are from science but mythic dream-speak is often consoling and inspiring to many. Thus I hold a pragmatic perspective: whatever personal belief on the issue of the soul works for you is fine with me; just don’t let your private beliefs interfere with the public pursuit of scientific advancement.
Our mammalian self and our cosmic self
Our mammalian self is our biological nature, our genetic heritage on the tree of life from which we grew into being as earthlings (citizens of the earth). Our cosmic self is the star dust and processes of the earth and energy that forms you. A science-based approach to life seeks to realize that our cosmic self and mammalian self are one. I wrote the following to remind me of this uplifting realization:
I am large – I’m made from the essence of stars and power
I am vast – I’m in the universe and the universe is in me
I am infinite – a cosmic form flowing from a formless source of energy
I am powerful – I contain in my DNA a long history of successful ancestors
I am a wondrous – a thousand brain synapses rooted together in harmony
I am special – a unique human being with psychological depth and potentiality
I am complex – a condominium of symbiotic life living within my mammalian body
I am magnificent – a cathedral of biological complexity and architecture
I am miraculous – a resulting relationship of sexual union grown to fruition
I am endless potential – a drop in the sands of time, the odds of a mountain
I am connected – to some Mystery larger than myself and beyond my conception
I also wrote the following to convey our interconnectedness:
We are one with the Universe and Ultimate Reality
We are all related, from the trees to the chimpanzee
Everything is interconnected, at one with the All.
When I wrote the above I had in mind Darwin’s ever branching evolutionary tree of life, as well as the science of ecology, symbiosis, atoms, and DNA; all of which is what forms us all, from the tree to the chimpanzee. By referring to “the All” I am referring to the Transcendent, i.e. the ineffable mystery of Ultimate Reality.
We are the universe in form, an orchestra of cells functioning in harmony. Our brains are literally “thinking meat” that can map the human genome and fly to the moon! We are a "magical" species that can record our voice, memory and images in inch by inch technology; we can use our phone or email to basically telepathically communicate with other bipedal hominids across the globe; we can drive a car for miles in minutes or fly from city to city, state to state.
With one decisive action we can chart a course of innovation and progress changing our lives forever. We are emerging cells in the body of life; our genome contains the information of a billion prior species that passed on their feedback and successful adaptations into our unconscious instincts we take for granted everyday. Billions and billions of prior species have died just so that we can perform the most rudimentary acts as a human, yet we complain about trifles and forget that we sit atop an evolutionary tree of skeletal remains that provided our genes the means to flourish.
We have at our fingertips the fixed and dependable laws of physics that in all probability never lead us astray; drop a ball and gravity acts upon it everyday, every time; offering us complete trust and dependability as we become scientific magicians wielding our destiny with the laws of nature acting in harmony with our will. Our ancestor's hard work, the laws of physics, and change all provide us the power to stay alive and thrive. Yet we too often bind ourselves by unsubstantiated fears and allow self-doubt to squelch our dreams, suppress our healthy desires, and limit our human potentiality.
When will we awake to our own grandeur as the universe represented in flowing form within a biosphere of exponential power. We are like the acorn with the potential to grow into a mighty oak tree, the grass that pushes through a crack in concrete; we are part of the infinite reality from which we sprang; we are the universe.
We truly are magnificent manifestations of that Emerging Mystery at the heart of the universe. When we awaken to our grand lineage and accept our mammalian nature we can better merge with the cosmic cycles and unity of the earth; as no longer separate "egos" but one humanity and multicellular organisms that are interlinked with the grand lineage of life on earth and the history of our universe. We truly are cosmic beings of stardust and power.
There is a sense of awe, beauty, and wholeness in this view of humanity that transcends the ego-centered "little self" as much as possible; as we seek to realize more and more our "Cosmic Self," as one species connected to the Whole of Reality.
