Reading my six year old daughter’s science book with her the other day, I learnt some amazing facts about the universe, space, and pre-historic life. It set me off on a brief but very exciting research that has led me to learning some new perspectives on the correlation between the way the universe is organized and who we really are.

First, a bit about where did we come from. As per the Big Bang theory, the Universe was created ex nihilo (Latin term meaning “out of nothing”) approximately 13.5 billion years ago. Some of the spiritual scriptures also independently mention this. The Bible talks about about “Son, look upon heaven and earth, and all that is in them: and consider that God made them out of nothing.” It is believed that the Earth was formed about 4.6 billion years ago. For the first four billion years or so, the only living things on Earth were microscopic, single-celled organisms. Then about 700 million years ago, the first real animals, such as jelly fish and sponges appeared in the sea. Over the next 200 million years, these evolved into creatures with hard parts (shells and bones). Then came the fishes, then life arrived onto land in the form of plants and insect-like animals. Post the extinction of dinosaurs about 65 million years ago, started the age of birds and mammals; with the first human-like creatures, the hominids, appearing about 2 million years ago. They were small and looked like their ape ancestors. Gradually, they evolved to become taller, with larger brains; the modern humans probably evolved only 200,000 years ago. While mulling through this data, two things came up for me. First, we are a mere organism, although evolved with a developed brain. Second, our entire existence pales in significance to the existence of the universe. If the Universe were 100 years old, human race would have been born only about 80 minutes ago and an average human life span would be less than 20 seconds.

Let me now share a bit about what the universe is made of and its connection with who we really are. The universe is made 99.99% of space, and interestingly, so are we – it’s just that with our limited vision we are unable to grasp that. To appreciate the vastness of the universe and how it’s made almost entirely of space, consider this. It takes light, traveling at over 1 billion km/ hour, about 1 second to travel from the moon to the earth. The sun is about 150 million kilometers away from the earth and it takes light about 10 minutes to travel from there to the earth. There are over 200 billion stars like the sun in our galaxy, the milky way, and it would take light about 4.2 years to travel from sun to its nearest star. If that’s not mind-numbing, consider that there are about 100 galaxies in the universe but it would take light about 25,000 years to travel from our nearest galaxy, the Canis Major Dwarf, to reach us.

And, we are quintessentially the same. We are all made of atoms, which in turn are 99.99% space. Also, 99.99% of what’s around in groups of atoms is space. The nucleus, which accounts for almost the entire mass of an atom, is so miniscule compared to the rest of the atom that if the atom were to be a room, we would not be able to even see the nucleus. For the nucleus to be the size of a grain of salt, the atom would need to be the size of a 14-story building. Incredible but true – our physical bodies are 99.99% space and that we are identical to the universe in our essential core. Although inner space has no form, it’s intensely alive. The empty space is life in its fullness, the unmanifested source out of which all manifestation flows. That brings us to the ultimate truth I previously wrote about, although at that time from a different perspective. We are a microcosm of the unmanifested universe. That is also the same as saying – we all have the God in us; or that we are all made of the same universal life energy; or that we are identical to each other and the universe in our essence. However, it’s our enlarged brains and our identification with the physical form (our bodies, the earth, and the small nucleus of the atom), however insignificant they maybe, that keeps us away from this awareness.

Where do we go from here? The universe is constantly evolving and it continues to take different forms in the process – galaxies, stars, planets, animals, plants and humans. The universal life energy that powers the universe flows through us too; it just takes different forms from time to time. All the forms arise from the universe and dissolve into it, but never die. Death is a concept of the mind and of its identification with the body form. This awareness helps us realize the immortality of our fundamental nature. That in turn guides us into being and doing whatever is in synchronicity with the evolution of the universe – and that’s what brings us true joy and inner peace.

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