This page might talk about what meanings the short statement “person is universe” might have and whether these meanings are correct. It was used by Lion on Meatball.
As an opening statement, I understand it as a literary form, expressing emotional connection. I can not understand it as a factual statement because the universe and a person are different things (the last is a miniscule part of the first) that can’t be equated.
I’ve been asking myself, “Lion, what do you mean when you say, “the Person is Universe” ..?”
Here is what I have found:
There are roughly 3 three different phrases (or attitudes) relating the person and the universe.
There are some words (in English at least,) where you do not have to put “part of” in front of, when it is in part. For example, “clay”: If you take a piece of clay, you can still call it “clay.” You don’t have to say, “This is a piece of clay,” or “This is a part of clay;” it is sufficient to say, “This is clay.” Similarly with pie: If you have a slice of pie, you don’t have to say that – you can just say, “This is pie.”
If you had a broken piece of a fork, though, you can’t say that it is “fork;” Rather, you call it “the broken part of the fork.”
What is common here? What is the discrimination? I think it is that the piece of clay, or the piece of pie, has all of the essential qualities of the whole thing. (The clay example is obvious, but in the case of the pie, it’s that you eat it, it’s tasty, it has cherry inside, etc.,.)
So to say that the person is universe is to say that the person is of the same substance as the universe, and that any qualities within the human being are qualities of the universe.
It represents (or “I am making it represent, for the purpose of drawing distinctions”) a fundamentally different attitude towards the universe.
Not that the universe is defined by spatial extends, but that, further, the universe has an intrinsic within-ness. That the universe embodies a subjective experience. That there is consciousness and feeling and intelligence – as fundamental properties of the universe. Not in the sense of “at the center of our galaxy, or in the void of space, there is a place where you could talk with the universe,” but – clearly so, if you talk with another person, you are seeing the intelligence of the universe.
In the sense that if you have a gigantic ball of gas, – just wait a few billion years, and you will be able to talk with the people that the gas has formed into.
Teilhard put it another way; He wrote: “There is neither spirit nor matter in the world; the stuff of the universe is spirit-matter. No other substance but this could produce the human molecule. I know very well that this idea of spirit-matter is regarded as a hybrid monster, a verbal exorcism of a duality which remains unresolved in its terms.” … “Nevertheless, the step must be taken. For in fact, pure spirituality is as unconceivable as pure materiality. Just as, in a sense, there is no geometrical point, but as many structurally different points as there are methods of deriving them from different figures, so every spirit derives its reality and nature from a particular type of universal synthesis.”
This is hastily written, because I am bounded by time.
Basically, a view of the universe that does not refer to the parade of experience is not a factual description of the universe. It remains fundamentally incomplete, if it is about outsides, and not substantially about insides, and then further, what is found on the inside.
Teilhard used the words “personalization,” “cephalization,” “psychicalization,” to refer to the process whereby “the universe aquires a personality.” (I’m looking for, but cannot find right now, a quote by Emerson, wherein he describes a process by which everything comes to talk, including clouds and the rock under our feet. I think it was in Representative Men.)
I do not object to being a part of a larger whole; The consciousness of the universe is like the arachnid’s compound eye. Further, there is individuality, a multiplication of consciousness, without which we would be broken, lonely, and solipsist, without difference.
The reason for the discrimination between “part of” and “is” is to make very clear that consciousness is a fundamental element of universal substance, that the person is substantial to the history of the universe, and that the universal drama is based in heart & intelligence, which are not phantasms, but rather, a magical transcendant rock. I would draw three divisions of matter: The inert (rocks, liquids, gasses,) intelligence (thinking, feeling, reasoning, imagining,) and spirit (that which is perceptible to the heart and the intelligence by way of imagination, but that is not inert.) We are not sidereal; We are primary actors at this point of history, and it is the universe itself as spirit that we are and that we enact and that we serve.
I find myself in a non-solipsist empirical idealism. It is not that rocks and molecules are illusions, and that “only thoughts are real.” It is that the rocks and molecules are moving to align themselves with spiritual ideals and imaginations. This is what the human being is doing, in the long run, provided that we do not destroy ourselves.
So it’s not related to the EgoBug discussion after all?
They’re clearly related discussions.
I happen to believe in the concept of personality, of individuality. I am not into the “we dissolve into universal existence” model. I like the concept of love that unites while preserving distinction and separateness.
I find much more in common with the EgoFeature than with the EgoBug.
If we have to erase each other out of existence in order to set things right – well, that seems to me like killing the person in order to save the person: “What are we working for, again?”
I’ve been re-skimming the conversation on EgoBug, which is long.
If you had addressed me last December about the self, I would have said, “The true self is the conscious observer.” I have felt this way for something like 18 years.
My understanding has changed dramatically though, since somewhere around last January. I had an extraordinary and surprising (to myself, at least) conversion in thought. Today I say, “The self is a unity between consciousness, personality (mind, mental stuff, heart,) and the body (the physical form.)”
I see this as a Christianization, not because I’ve become Christian (I haven’t,) but because the Egyptian-Jewish-Christian-Islamic concept of the Self is strongly tied to personality and to body. It could also called Westernization, though the Christian language is the easiest one for me to speak. “No more disembodied self’s for me.”
Do you know how science explains, where the carbon of our body come from? --JuanmaMP
The carbon cycle, and before that, I think it’s the triple-alpha process followed in red giants.
See: Wikipedia:Carbon_cycle, Wikipedia:Stellar_nucleosynthesis, Wikipedia:Triple-alpha_process
ConnieBarlow? envisioned an adaption of the periodic table, focused on the origin of the elements; See: We Are Made of Stardust -- Toward a New Periodic Table of Elements.

Yes, Lion, that theory about weight elements I meant. If I am in the right, I read about it the first time in Cosmos (Carl Sagan). I see that separations between entities aren’t therefore a ditch, even on scientific field. With that title on page, then it deserves a mention, imho. --JuanmaMP
Thank you, Juanma;
But – I don’t understand, – what do you mean, “a ditch” ..?
I don’t understand what you mean when you say, “separation between entities aren’t therefore a ditch, …” What is “a ditch,” in this phrase?
(To the surface of my mind: A ditch is something like a hole, or a small chasm. Alternatively, a suddenly-concocted escape, an avoidance.)
Lion, It resonates with me that you refer to Teilhard de Jardin, altough I have only read one of his books and my main memory is that he worked to bridge the gap between Christian belief and science. Mainly he tried this, by replacing the explicite creation - of man and various things by God a few thousand time ago - by the creation of a universe having the potential for life and mind a few billion years ago. Darwin’s evolution as a fulfilling of a inbuilt potential.
I only do not see how Teilhard is connected to this page. He is not saying something new about the universe or the persons in it. He just offers an interpretation to get rid of an authority conflict, that negatively influenced the catholic church.
Back to PersonIsUniverse. As a chemist in former life I can only agree to the principle picture you draw. Everything in the known universe is build from the same building blocks of matter and energy, and the most important are the elements. And yes, the state of the art theory says that all heavier elements have formed in stars over billions of years and they become available only when these stars explode at the end of their lifetime and their matter is reused for a new planetary system.
I would express this by “a person is build from the same physical components that follow the same laws of physics/nature that rule the whole universe”.
I think you prove the sentence “person is universe” wrong in it’s extremely abbreviated 3-word-form, when it needs a 3-page-explanation. I do not think that one can get this message across in normal communication and be understood.
Teilhard:
I only do not see how Teilhard is connected to this page. He is not saying something new about the universe or the persons in it. He just offers an interpretation to get rid of an authority conflict, that negatively influenced the catholic church.
But to say that Teilhard just offers an interpretation to get rid of an authority conflict – I’ve got an entire book by him that says otherwise. Sorry, I just can’t walk with that explantation of Teilhard at all; I would vigorously argue against it.
Teilhard very strongly and ardently believed in the Omega point, in the coming unification of all of humanity by twin forces (both love and necessity,) he explained elaboritely his reasoning about how and why this would come about (the development of the human soul as a natural extension, the development of purposive thinking within the human being, purpose’s subordination of all matter to the purposes of intelligence, the highest ideals within intelligence, namely love,) and he elucidated his theology quite clearly.
Most have not heard it, because it is complex. People either say “he was trying to make Christians accept science,” or they say “he was predicting the great things that communications technology will do.” Both of those are true, but they are extremely limited surface understandings, appropriations for particular audiences.
Whether what Teilhard has to say is “new” or not is a separate discussion. For myself, it is not so important that something be new, as it is that it be true. That said, I am not the stuffy classicist who says that nothing new ever arrives, and my concept of truth includes the presence of a fountain that forever flows and reveals greater and greater glories. That is a very ancient concept, and I find it to be a very true concept, so I always keep my ears out.
It was also a concept that Teilhard clearly shares as well. The first chapter of “The Future of Man” is a description of the Immobilists and the Progressives. Teilhard places himself squarely in the progressive camp.
The Person is Universe:
I see two conversations:
I feel that the conversation is hanging on 1.
I’m happy to talk about #1, but truth be told, I’m much more interested in talking about #2.
“The person is part of the universe:”

Of course, the universe being a valueless place, there is no merit, at all.
Existence is a meager thing. Religious naturalists speak of “acceptance.” There is dis-enchantment.
I see it as a transitional state of consciousness; A half-way house. 1 One gets the sense that something horrible has happened, but that, if we are quiet, and sincere, and scientific, perhaps we can avoid something horrible from happening again. Let’s just look at this mountain and these trees, because they never hurt anybody, and let’s look at the immensity of the galaxy, and reflect on human nothingness.
This does not agree with my sense of reality at all.
And so when someone says, “A person is part of the universe,” and when they mean just about all that, (which goes without being spoken,) I have to part ways.
To put my perspective into a similar miniature phrase, I fish around, and come up with, “No, I think – I think that the person is universe. Let me try and explain.”
“The person is universe:”
This is a radically different concept of the human being and the universe.
I believe it passes the twin tests:
Lion, yes I’m aware of the Omega-concept of Teilhard but I don’t see is as a genuine concept. He envisions a target of development, that he roughly identifies with Jesus and calls that Omega-Point. Probably this is over-simplified but you probably understand what I mean. It is a tranformed clergical view that the creation follows a plan of God.
I do not want to diminish Teilhard de Chardin, but apart from his work as an paleontologist and is integrative bridge-building-role, I do not see any scientific contributions. Maybe there are far-sighted religious intuitions but I’m not aware of them and you did not elaborate on them.
To construct a special role for the human person can have positive and negative results. The person is what it is. The question is, what you generate out of it. Hope that the future will be bright? Realism, that we feel the need of responsible action facing an ope future? I feel the need for a dinamic balance depending on the context and the situation of a discussion.
BTW one cannot reduce biology to the properties of the carbon atom, however fundamental it is. Without Mg there would no plant life (chlorophyll) and with Fe no animals (hemoglobin), without N no proteins, no genes.
I wouldn’t mind to access the universe from a philosophical, religious or intuitive perspective, but one can not easily sell such pictures as given facts.
Helmut, my sense is as if, after reading what I said, you couldn’t come up with a single argument against it – so you just threw up your hands, and said, “Well, I’ll just make up some things for him to have said.”
I cannot help but feel that you just looked past everything I had said about time. Perhaps you were busy brushing your teeth as you read what I said about the withinness in the universe? Or did the word “carbon” catch your eye, and distract you, from seeing my point about the human being as a layer in history? Did you notice any difference between the two perspectives on the universe? What do you feel more accurately describes the whole?
To respond to your points:
Positive and negative results can arise.
Yes, positive or negative results can arise. But of reducing the human being, only negative will result.
Man lives not by bread alone, and he will die without being who he is, and receiving what he needs. Humanity can only emulate plant-life for so long, treating health-bars to full height, stimulating fun meters to satisfaction, and fulfilling pre-fabricated patterns for eternity.
The question is, what you generate out of it.
Do you worry that reality is inconsistent with the good? Shall we obscure the universe in the human being, to keep him well behaved?
One can always say “We shall see,” but only doubt is expressed, not a shred of argument.
Hope & Realism are both necessary.
But I don’t disagree, do I.
How can you call these facts?
As much as it is scientific fact that there is a pencil in my hand, it is scientific fact that there is a human soul, a human heart. I need only point to Shakespeare for proof, and say, “The thing it points to.”
Do you have a reason, or an argument, – anything to suggest otherwise?
Take the time that you need.
RichardDawkins goes from point to point saying, “Scienifically, we understand that there is no God.” But what RichardDawkins does not do is go from point to point, saying, “Scientifically, we understand that there is no such thing as the human heart.” That, I have never heard of him doing, — and the atheists argue adamantly and passionately for their morality.
Show me the person without heart or soul, and I will say, “OK, Helmut, you got me.”
It’s the exact same as if you said “pencils are not scientific facts.” After all, you don’t see them in our phsyics or chemistry books, do we? No, no – to the contrary, we only see atoms and molecules.
And yet I hold one up and show it to you.
Done. End of discussion.
From that point, it’s up to you to change your mind. Or construct a baroque philosophy on the non-existence of pencils. 7
That you resist the scientific fact of the human heart points not to failure of my arguments, but rather to the exact growth in consciousness that our time requires.
Lion, I’m sorry that I can’t live up to your expectations of discussion quality. I moved to this page to continue the discussion started an Meatball and show sympathy in this situation. But I seem to be unable to cope with the broadness of how you handle the topic. It seems that you would just need an “ahh, yes, interesting” to go on and on. This is to little for me. I want to understand and for this I need some order and consistency in language and ideas. I do not know where you come from and where you want to go to. Where it leads to. I have no sympathies for Dawkins and I can’t argue about the fundamental properties of the universe, because this is a matter of interpretation. I do not understand you points about time and within-ness. So I gripped to those words that I still understood and tried to connect to what they mean and how this is different for me. Obviously in vain. Probably an EOD from your side is very appropriate. I would not mind if you delete my text from this page and make it cleanly explain your ideas. Hopefully others can adapt to your mode of communication better than I can.
Of what use could an “ahh, yes,” possibly be? For me, it’s about communicating an idea.
I wish that, instead of saying, “Lion, I don’t agree with this, that, and the other thing,” things that I hadn’t said, that you instead had said, “Lion, I don’t understand what you mean by X,” or if you had said, “Lion, are you implying Y?” or if you had said, “Lion, where are you going with all of this? What are the outcomes?”
There is order and consistency in my thoughts; In the thoughts of almost all people. It is just a matter of finding it.
If you had wanted to understand something, you could have always just ask a question.
(because Helmut’s response was revised while I wrote my own, in a relevant way, I post a second response.)
Your change in your response explains everything that happened to me.
I do not understand you points about time and within-ness. So I gripped to those words that I still understood and tried to connect to what they mean and how this is different for me.
Without the idea of within-ness, (or the idea of “universe as time,”) the whole thing doesn’t work. Now I see exactly why you couldn’t respond, and now I understand why you connected on the words that you knew clearly – (for example, Teilhard,) and so on.
To specifically address to “where I am going with this,” it is fair. Because: I myself do not know. I think about the role of the human being in the universe as best as I understand, but I simply do not know where we are going. I think, though, that if our vision about the world is true, if it is right, both by external science and by the internal heart, that we will go into the future.
I am sorry, Helmut.
I wish I had asked you, “Helmut, why did you think I said X, Y, or Z? What do you think about what I had to say about time, the within-ness, the role of the human being in history?”
I have recorded the structure of our conversation into my notebook, under “the Diadic form,” to remember in the future.
EOD is fine.