One of the foundational obsessions of the physical sciences is to develop a Theory of Everything - that is, a model or framework that is able to fully describe the Universe. Different theories have been proposed, from Newton’s laws to general relativity to quantum mechanics. However, all of these theories have been found to not fully apply to the Universe at all of its levels - most notably, theories tend to fall apart at the sub-atomic and the Cosmic levels.
Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem provides a strong argument that a Theory of Everything is unattainable - his proof elegantly suggests that any language (including the mathematical languages used in physics) will always create inconsistencies that cannot be reconciled. For example, in plain English I could declare: “This sentence is false!” If my sentence was actually “false” then the sentence would be “true”, but if that statement were “true” then it must, by virtue of the declaration, be “false”, but if it was “false” then the sentence would be “true”… and so on.
The desire to seek a out a Theory of Everything is not limited to the realm of modern scientific inquiry. There are parallel concepts in cultures, modern and ancient. Notably, the Hindu concept of Brahman, which can loosely be described as the fundamental, unifying reality of the Universe. Similar to Gödel refuting the scientific possibility of a Theory of Everything, the Buddha is said to have rejected this notion of Brahman. From my (notably limited) understanding of this, Buddhism does not reject the concept of Brahman, of a fundamental, singular reality, but that, as a result of the dynamic, ever-changing, ever-emerging nature of reality - efforts to commune with a fundamental reality are in vain.
So, why am I talking about this? As humans, across cultures, there has been a fundamental existential curiosity in understanding the Universe around us. It is of course, very interesting to me to understand the nature of reality - it is marvelous, beautiful, and terrifying that we are here at all. There seems to be a tension between trying to “capture” the nature of some fundamental, all-encompassing reality and trying to understand what it means to exist, what it is “to be”.
This tension arises over-and-over, the subjective versus the objective. Today, adherents of the religion of science1 generally turn their noses at the understanding of reality grounded in more mystical, subjective interpretations. Simultaneously, quantum physicists are stymied by the fact that the mere act of observing reality appears to alter it.
We tend to fail to fully comprehend reality when we look too far away from ourselves. Physicists look to the Cosmos or at the sub-atomic to better understand reality as it fundamentally is. Science is quite bad at understanding the human condition - this is why psychology and many other health sciences are often labeled as “soft sciences”. The thing though is that we do not live in the Cosmos nor among atoms and quarks - we live in realm of humans. For some reason, modern science is quite bad at understanding this realm, even though we have far greater and richer information about it available to us constantly.
We try to look back billions of years to a hypothesized beginning to the Universe or collide particles together in search of a “God” particle. We are searching for “God” everywhere except for within ourselves.
Throughout human history, many cultures have converged on the parallels between the microcosm and the macrocosm. The analogy basically states that, since humans are products of the Universe, we are subject to the fundamental laws of the Universe in our daily life and existential experience. Therefore, we can learn a great deal about the Universe (the macrocosm) simply by learning about the reality of our daily lives and experiences (the microcosm).
For many who are uncomfortable with the mystic, the microcosm-macrocosm can feel hokey. Science can only engage with things that can be quantifiably measured and verified and the microcosm-macrocosm idea doesn’t tend to fit neatly into this paradigm.
That said, it is quite simple to understand. For example, if all life on Earth is born and dies, it is fairly intuitive to assume that all entities are born and eventually die. One can intuit that the Sun was born and will die, that the Earth was born and will die, and so on. Further, because there is a constant cycle of life and death among living animals and humans, it is fairly intuitive to suggest that there are Cosmic cycles throughout the Universe. These are all ideas supported by modern science.
I do not mean to suggest that intuiting the nature of the Universe from our personal experience is a more powerful framework for knowledge building than that of science - this intuition can lead to ideas that only bear the notion of “truthyness”. However, science has proven poorly adept at helping us understand the human experience and what it means to be alive and what it means to live well. In our enlightened era, this is squarely the purview of philosophy. However, even the more mystical approaches to philosophy are considered “hokey”, as many analytical philosophers prefer to be understood as scientists and rational thinkers and not spiritualists.
The macrocosm-microcosm paradigm is powerful because it points to a fundamental aspect of reality - that is that a Cosmic body forms (i.e., a galaxy, a star, a planet) and from it is born a microcosm. First, the Sun formed - around it formed the planets. Then the Earth formed - upon it the ecosystems that birthed life. There is a constant chain of emergence, a sort of constant, dynamic process of expansion.
Under the Big Bang hypothesis, there was a singular point and all of reality has formed in this emergent chain - galaxies birthing stars birthing planets birthing people. From each macrocosm is born a far more complex and infinite microcosm - infinite because within each new layer, a whole new set of layers emerges. Reality is a great fractal explosion.
And so, to me, there is a deep and fundamental lesson in bearing witness to this emergent chain of reality. That is that, from each Cosmological body, there is a born an even more complex and rich microcosm. What does this mean when we understand ourselves to be the macrocosm, the Cosmological body? What complex microcosm can arise around and within ourselves, simply by the nature of us existing?
Science is concerned with things very big and very small - whereas the spiritualist is concerned with the macrocosm outside of us and the microcosm within us. We can seek to understand the nature of the emergent chain that constitutes reality or we can seek to “be” the link in that chain that we are.
These are, of course not mutually exclusive. I am suggesting that the more we cultivate our internal microcosms, the more we can come to understand the nature of the external macrocosms - this is based on the assumption that we are all subject to the same (unknowable) laws of a nature.
Science is generally concerned with codifying knowledge of reality as a societal good - the spiritualism I am discussing is generally concerned with stepping into “knowing” at a personal level. For, we do not experience the world as equations and laws - we experience it within ourselves as feelings and impressions and experiences. We experience reality as the expansion of our internal microcosm.
You may have heard of the Buddhist Eight-fold Path to Enlightenment. The important word here is “path” - a teacher cannot give their student “enlightenment” like depositing coins in a bank, the teacher can only point out the potential paths to enlightenment the student can walk on their own. “The Path” can be understood as a metaphor for cultivating our own microcosm and, through this path, we can “become” something greater than ourselves - much like how the Sun “becomes” the center of a solar system!
The macrocosm-microcosm analogy represents one such “path”. We can look towards the macrocosms within which we are micro, and by virtue of this experience, we are able to become the macro of our own microcosm. Hokey? Maybe ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
In the end, the path I am describing is about being present for the world around us. The only way to learn from our macrocosm is to experience it. Watch the sun rise and set. Pay attention to moon cycles and notice how the stars move in the sky (if you can even see them from where you live). Watch the birds. Sit next to a creek. Watch the grass grow and the cows grazing of it. When we let knowledge be dictated to us from outside, we are unable to receive knowledge straight from the source, from the reality that is constantly expanding all around us.
Disconnected from the natural world, as so many of us are, we are disconnected from the reality of it all! When we start to re-tap into the natural world around us, we are able to better sense who we are in a mythic, Cosmological sense. We are able to re-tap into the knowledge that from us can be born a microcosm even more beautiful than we already are!
I do not mean this in a condescending fashion, simply to accurately describe reality - we have a populace that is told to simply trust scientific findings as if they are religious edicts. “Believe in Science” is a common refrain, despite its meaning being antithetical to the fundamental ideas of science (quite similarly to how many modern Christian movements today are antithetical to the fundamental ideas of Christ). One must only read the limitations section of any human subjects study to know that many of our scientific findings should be interpreted with a healthy dose of uncertainty and a critical eye.