I just received these thought provoking images from “What Is Enlightenment?” magazine’s weekly “Think About This” e-mail:
Microcosm, Macrocosm
“This image comparison, first featured in The New York Times, definitely gives one something to think about. On the left is a microscopic image of a mouse brain’s neuronal network produced by Mark N. Miller of Brandeis University’s Nelson Lab. On the right is the Max Planck Institute’s computer simulation of the vast dark matter network (purple) connecting visible-matter galaxies (yellow) across the universe. “Together,” observes New York Times journalist David Constantine, “they suggest the surprisingly similar patterns found in vastly different natural phenomena.”
Nurons To Cosmos
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Part of the awakening of Integral is that as we are increasingly able to take more and more perspectives on reality, our intuitive understanding of the Kosmos grows. And as we grow, gradually the “Integral Map” becomes the “Integral Territory”. From the microscopic patterns of physical phenomena, and the extreme subtleties of meditation, all the way to the infinite vastness of galaxies, and the dark matter in the Kosmos, fractal patterns repeat themselves again and again. And this understanding begins to enter into us as a felt and intuitive sense. We begin to actually get what Ken Wilber means when he says: “Turtles all the way up, turtles all the way down.”
Taking a new point of view is essential for growth. But it is just the beginning of a good Integral Practice. We must first take a perspective and then we must make a contemplation of it. Contemplate, contemplate, contemplate. Contemplate to the point where the outer merges with the inner, where the microcosm is seen in the macrocosm, and where fractals are seen all way up and all the way down. This is an extremely necessary part of the practice so that the perspective fully sinks into consciousness.
When a perspective fully sinks into us at the level of consciousness, the felt sense is that it hits home. The perspective then arises as an intuitive insight, and it becomes ours. It is no longer an intelectual perspective that is “out there”, but rather it becomes an intuitive perspective that is “in here”. It becomes an expression of who we are, and we become a manifestation of it. A gift that naturally radiates outward and is expressed onto the Kosmos.
OK. So, then what? Well, then we write poetry….
To see a world in a grain of sand
And heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
William Blake
