An entire universe exists in every human and yet we believe we know another human after a handshake, a conversation. The inner world of all humans is like a mosaic or a kaleidoscope.
Some say that both the inner and outer world are surreal.
Traveling across our galaxy, the Milky Way, takes approximately 100,000 years for light. The Milky Way is a galaxy of trillions of galaxies in the observable universe.
Every human being has within her an entire universe to examine, and yet some are convinced that they know everything about another human through a single glance.
Is it a rash of our vanity or ignorance? Our unawareness? Our biological programming? Do we ever have time to scratch the surface of another human being?
Some people find it a scary thought that we cannot get to know another human fully. Some people find it a liberating thought that we can never get to know another human fully.
Is it a tragedy that no other human being can ever get to know you fully? Or is it a comedy? Is it bittersweet? Are we all alone in our respective universe? In space, no sounds waves propagate. Are you screaming in vain into your space for another human being to understand you deeply?
Maybe you do not understand yourself?
On the other hand, maybe you can get to know another human being completely through a single meeting?
What is it that makes a stranger after a “hello” feel like a close friend you have known all your life? What is it that makes a close friend you have known all your life one day feel like a stranger?
You sense something in the stranger. You ceased perceiving something in your friend. Or is it a matter of how you sense and perceive?
How do you perceive yourself?
How was the universe formed? Was the universe created by someone or something? If someone or something created the universe, did the same someone or something create humankind? Or does the universe and humankind have different creators?
Or are both humankind and the universe children of physical and chemical processes? A mathematical formula that became organic and conscious? A mathematical formula, a physical and chemical process that evolved to study and ponder itself?
Imagine a point that divides into another point. Several points in a row can, from a distance, look like a straight line. A straight line can curve until the two ends of the line meet each other. A circle? Time? Gravity? A cell?
Humankind comprises the same material as the stars. The iron and oxygen in your blood comes from a dying and exploded star. Likewise, potassium, which is needed for your brain cells to switch between activity and rest. Potassium has atomic number 19 in the periodic table. Within some mystical traditions, the number one stands for beginning and the number nine for completion. Alpha and Omega.
Sodium is also needed for a neuron to shift between rest and activity. Number 11 is the atomic number for sodium. Sodium also comes from the debris that a dying and exploding star hurls into space.
1–1=0. Ones and zeros. Information. Communication. What comes first: activity or rest? Alpha or Omega?
The above mentioned connection between potassium and spiritual traditions is most likely a coincidence. The human brain seems to see patterns and connections where, in reality, there are neither patterns nor connections. Once upon a time, our brain looked up at the starry sky and thought that one star belonged to another, a third, etc. So our brain gave that pattern a name, and, most importantly, attributed to the pattern a profound meaning. (The eyes are literally the most outer part of the brain, so saying that the brain looks is reasonable. The question is where your “self” or “I” fits into the action of looking, sensing, etc.?).
Our brain also looked at the pattern formed on a plate that was shelled by subatomic particles, such as protons or electrons. Before the protons hit the plate, they had passed two parallel openings on a front plate. Until that experiment, our brain assumed that protons and electrons would hit the plate as if they were “gun bullets”. But the pattern that arose on the plate showed that the particles were like both “gun bullets” and waves. There was an “interference pattern” (under certain conditions). Our brain assumed that a proton or electron can “behave” like both a particle and a wave. Microcosm has a duality. A “wave-particle duality” (this is an oversimplification of the “double-slit experiment” and no quantum physicist would use the term “wave-particle duality”).
Some have called it a paradox. Some also find it a paradox that both Lucifer and Jesus called themselves the “Morning Star”.
Albert Einstein has said the following about the gap (or inconsistency) between macrocosm (that seems continuous) and microcosm (that seems discrete or quantized):
It seems as though we must use sometimes the one theory and sometimes the other, while at times we may use either. We are faced with a new kind of difficulty. We have two contradictory pictures of reality; separately neither of them fully explains the phenomena of light, but togehter they do.
Protons and electrons, together with neutrons, make up an atom. The proton is positively charged; the electron is negatively charged, and the neutron has a neutral charge. The proton and neutron together make up the atomic nucleus. Like a moon, the electron circles around the nucleus (again, this is an oversimplification of the modern atomic model).
Never do the nucleus and the electron meet. Never do they touch each other.
If you could enlarge an atom to be the size of the Superdome in New Orleans (a giant indoor arena for American football), the nucleus would be the size of a bead. The bead would hover in the middle of the arena while the electrons revolved around the outer walls of the building at a speed of several thousand kilometers per second.
The subatomic particles lack color, smell, taste, and texture. They are neither hard, soft, mat nor shiny. Despite their “non-properties” (well, they have properties like velocity, position, spin, and charge), they are the building blocks of everything that we know in the universe. Including humankind.
The firmness and other characteristics of all the everyday objects made up of these subatomic particles, this “stuff”, result from the relationship between electrical forces acting in and between the proton, neutron, and electron.
In its most fundamental form, matter consists solely of these electric charges. Out of “nothing” arose “something”.
In this void arose a point.
From that point, through the billions of years, humankind emerged. In its most fundamental form, a human comprises these electric charges. Pluses and minuses. Positive and negative. And neutral. That’s why we cannot walk through a wall or sink through a chair that we are sitting on. The atom is stable because of it.
That’s why a human being never ever and really touches anyone or anything.
When you kiss your child on the forehead, only your and your child’s electrical charges sense each other. When you hold your loved one’s hand, only you and your loved one’s electrical charges interact with each other. Exchanging information.
But maybe it is not so “only”?
For one (charged) point turned into an atom. An atom turned into a star, a galaxy, and sentient beings.
The discreteness of microcosm gave rise to the experienced continuousness of consciousness in macrocosm.
In every human being, there is an entire universe. Macrocosm and microcosm. Information. Interaction. All objects are electric charges. All humans are electric charges.
Can electric charges communicate with each other?
“In the beginning was the Word.” What comes first, in what order: activity or rest? Consciousness or matter? Or you cannot have one without the other: everything is relational and interactive?
Chaos is information, communication that takes longer to describe, understand than Order.
Perhaps the universe forms and ceases in rhythmic cycles? Like a heartbeat? A pulse? Or is Everything a result of Shiva’s eternal dance of creation and destruction? Life, consciousness, may not have a beginning or an end.
Maybe you and your loved one are exchanging the totality and infinity of your respective inner universe when you sense each other’s electric charges?
It is highly unlikely that you can know another human being through a single glance, a meeting, a conversation. Perhaps it is less unlikely that you can sense another human’s entire universe with its billions of galaxies through a handshake, a hug?
Since both of you, at your fundamental level, are electric charges (or more accurate; electromagnetic fields). Information flowing between your respective locations between macro- and microcosm. In your location, everything converges.
Never touch, but still affect each other.
A human being exists between the macrocosm and the microcosm. Cha0s is information, communication that takes longer t1me to describe, understand than Order.
In humankind, everything meets.
My brain and my heart say of everything: “I know, I know nothing.” Perhaps the wisest thing a human can think about and assert about the universe and humankind:
Maybe, maybe not.
*Originally, the text was written 10–12 years ago, but never published. So it may contain facts and references that are outdated.
