UNIVERSE WITHIN by Gwen Randall-Young

- Fred Alan Wolfe, PhD
Theoretical physicist

The new physics is turning our notions of reality upside down. Our notions of life unfolding in a linear way are being challenged. Time is an illusion, there is no objective reality, everything is happening at once, we live in parallel universes. These are ideas that at one time might have seemed ludicrous. We now must consider these possibilities, as radical as they might seem, as radical as the ideas of a round Earth, or the sun as the centre of our solar system must have seemed when they began to dawn on human consciousness.

The paradoxical difference is that science gave us answers about our physical world, but what science is discovering now about the nature of reality has been known by sages through the ages. Science is catching up with Spirit.

Science is teaching us now, that all things are connected. Hindu mystical wisdom has long taught that maya, the illusion of separateness obscures the underlying oneness of reality. Kabir, the 15th century Indian poet said: “Behold the One in all things. It is the second that leads you astray.”

Cosmologists teach us that we are made of the same stuff as the galaxies – yet, long ago Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa said “The universe is in each person in such a way that each person is in it; and so every person in the universe is the universe.”

Scientists suggest that the human brain may be a hologram fragment of the universe - the whole of the universe existing within that fragment. Thus we would have access to some kind of understanding of all that is, for it is in us. Similarly, the Gnostic mystics were concerned with the direct realization of eternal truths - intuitive insight into the nature of reality. This knowledge, they believed, could be accessed directly. Similarly, Jesus said, “The kingdom of Heaven is within you,” while Rumi offered, “When you seek Him, look for Him in your looking. Closer to you than yourself to yourself.”

It would seem to me that whatever soul, or soul knowing is, it has been a constant in the human species, independent of era or worldly knowledge. Modern day expressions of wisdom are not more insightful or profound than those intuited in the past. If anything, our dependence upon, and favouring of left-brain rationality over our more intuitive, sensing capabilities has handicapped us in terms of accessing this wisdom.

What is different now, is our emerging understanding that soul is not something that emerges out of physical form, but that physical form is an expression of soul. Our lives are the physical manifestation of our essence. We are not the “created” but rather, the “creators.” This, of course, changes everything. What happens when we bring conscious awareness to that process? Can we be the lucid dreamers in this dream of life? I think we can.

In order to do so though, we must be in touch with our spirits, we must make room for soul to be felt, and silence, for it to be heard. With the growing dominance of technology in our lives such as computers, cell phones, video games and big screen televisions, soul is being squeezed out. If soul’s purpose is to shape knowledge into material form, what kind of raw material are we giving it to work with? Is the material form manifesting globally today a reflection of the kind of “knowledge” we have been shaping?

These are sobering thoughts. The notion of being conscious extends far beyond our own individual thoughts and psyches. We must be collectively conscious of the world we are creating. Perhaps we should turn everything off for a while, and just listen…

Gwen Randall-Young is a psycho-therapist and author of Dancing Soul: The Voice of Spirit Evolving gwendall@shaw.ca, www.gwen.ca