Small and Large

The Bhagavad Gita has helped me to a fascinating new way of conceptualizing something. It says: “Your soul, your self, is too small to be harmed by any weapon.” “The individual soul is smaller than a tiny fraction of the size of the end of a hair, but God/Source/Creator is the smallest of all, and can easily enter into the heart of the individual soul.”

The Bhagavad Gita also compares the smallness of the Creator to the gigantic material universe which came from that smallness. I’m exhilarated and inspired by the idea that creation is from the smallest to the largest, from inside out. That makes sense to me. Crystals grow that way. Even when I stir my coffee, my instinct is to make an expanding spiral which begins in its center.


My mind was conditioned, probably because of the way the Bible was interpreted to me, to think of the Creator/God as outside myself, and very large. On the other hand, when I thought of something “within” I could visualize only the dark inside of the body. Thousands of creaky old teachings gave me the idea that to “face God” in some way, I should look up and lift my hands.

The Old Testament creation stories caused me to imagine a gigantic Being fashioning the earth, the sun, humans, animals, like a big potter at a wheel, or a child making mud pies. Biblical language leads to that. This naturally caused me to conceive of myself as a small creature on a big stage created by the Biggest of all, looking down on me.

For that reason I’ve always had trouble with statements like, “look within for God,” and “The Source is within you.” Now, with the idea that God/The Source is the smallest of the small, and is within my own very small (relative to the size of the body) Soul, I finally am able to conceptualize, if only in a crude way, God as within.

I can’t help immediately thinking of quantum physics’ ”string theory” -- that everything in the universe is made up of vibrating bits of energy, possibly the smallest of the small, from which all the physical universe is constructed -- the vibrations of the smallest creating and sustaining the components of sub-atomic particles, then atoms, then structures made of atoms, molecules -- sphere expanding outside sphere -- and on out to humans and elephants and cars and stars and galaxies.

I realize that the Source is inconceivable by my human mind, that non-physical things like the Soul can’t be compared in size to physical things, and that Creation is perhaps what we’d describe as a grand illusion in which nothing is really smaller or larger, but a new way of conceptualizing nevertheless has helped me to entertain the feeling of God “within” instead of outside and above.

COMIC RELIEF

I've always like to draw, although you wouldn't know it from these cartoons.





Here’s an odd “self originated” belief or insight that came to me years ago, contrary to everything I’ve ever read or heard: There is something wrong, in some respect, with the application of the Doppler Effect in astronomy and astrophysics.

This belief is based entirely on intuition and not on scientific investigation. I cannot explain it or prove it is true. I wish I had shown enough aptitude for mathematics to enable me to understand more about physics, especially astrophysics and quantum physics, than one can glean from those often confusing books for laymen -- confusing because it is often impossible for the valiant authors to translate mathematical conceptions of the universe into words. A professor once told me, as I made my way through a popular book about Einstein’s theory of relativity, that it is simply impossible to understand relativity theory without knowing the math. I feel like an illiterate person in the world's most important library.

Speaking of Einstein, here’s another of my intuitions and convictions: There is something wrong in Einstein’s relativity theory and his related theories. I don’t know what’s wrong – just something significant. I think it will eventually be proven, as I also think that my belief about the Doppler Effect won’t sound so crazy someday. But we can expect those with a vested interest in promoting Einstein as the ultimate supergenius to put up a fight to preserve his standing.

In the next entry I expect to write about the self originated belief that is most important to me and most difficult to explain. It has to do with eternity.