The Cosmos Within

In the novel "Cross Roads" by Wm. Paul Young, Toni, the main character, suffers a traumatic brain injury and slips into a coma from where he crosses over to the world beyond where he meets Jesus and others. Jesus tells him: "I never stopped being fully God, fully the creator. Since the beginning of time the entire cosmos exists inside me."

This passage is consistent with our modern science-based understanding of how the universe was formed, and still exists, in an intelligent integrative manner. Within this framework, all entities within the universe are interdependent and inseparable parts of a cosmic whole.

This idea originated from our understanding of how the universe came into existence some 13.7 billion years ago at a singularity known as "the big bang" before which nothing existed, not even time. At the point of the big bang the universe is thought to have more or less exploded into a widespread and very hot plasma like sea of energy. Within a very small fraction of a second the energy sea began to cool and as it did a portion of these energies converted to particles with mass (Einstein pointed out that energy and mass are interconvertible.). Certain of these particles then coalesced to form atoms which in turn formed the molecules that make up all matter including life forms of all kinds. As this process unfolded, it did so in an integrative interdependent manner for which there seemed to have been a built-in guiding intelligence.

What this means is that if all atoms and molecules are connected in a web of interdependence, then all things composed of atoms and molecules, which is literally all things, have within them a microcosm of the universe. Accordingly, Jesus's statement that "the entire cosmos exists inside me" would be correct but on an atomic level. However, this would not be true of just Jesus, but of all beings. Furthermore, if you consider that God the Divine is the collective intelligence of the universe, and that we are an integral part of that universe, then we are each a part of the Divine. Accordingly, Jesus's claim of being "fully God", would be correct, but again, not just for him, but for everyone.

With each of us being an equal part of the Divine, no person is superior to another and each of us has worth and dignity, the recognition of which is the first principle of the Unitarian Universalist congregations. This consideration gives a more profound meaning to the statement of our founding fathers that: "---- all men (people) are created equal."