There’s no way to get outside the universe. Heck! It’s hard to get outside a country, what with all the security concerns. And traveling elsewhere in the universe is beyond our abilities. You want a perspective on where you are in time and space? Look down at your camera phone on a clear night and take a picture of you with the Milky Way photo-bombing in the background.
Our most fundamental perspective provides a view of an interior. Now, don’t get claustrophobic. It’s a big interior, but, it is, nevertheless, an interior. There’s no door either opened or closed we can approach. Even in the great expanse of the galaxy we find ourselves and the galaxy “in” something.
Being “inside” will give some of us a sense of security and protection and others a sense of restriction. Being “inside,” is, however, a relative concept. We’re all inside the universe. We’re inside a local group of galaxies, inside a galaxy, and inside a Solar System. As I list them, they all encompass more to less volume, but still even the smallest is difficult to imagine. The volume of the Solar System alone is greater than 3,000,000 cubic Astronomical Units (Each is 93,000,000 miles cubed), and the sun’s influence might make a sphere with a diameter of four light years, so, the volume of our local “inside” might be 4/3 π 2LY^3. The numbers just get bigger with the galaxy and the Local Group. But they always remain finite. We’re always “inside.”
From the womb to the edges of the Local Group we’ve always been inside. So, “inside” shouldn’t, one might think, make us claustrophobic. Yet, many of us are. That psychological state is difficult, but not impossible, to overcome. Interesting, isn’t it, that it usually results from our physical circumstances?
There is another kind of being inside that we often pay little attention to: Being inside a thought pattern, particularly inside someone else’s patterned way of thinking. All of us have been subject to such an “inside,” but many of us—maybe all—don’t even recognize that we are inside a philosophy, a worldview. And we often remain inside without any feeling of being closed in. Maybe this is the "inside" that should make us feel claustrophobic.
You might not be able “to get outside” the physical universe, but you do have some doors—often hard to open—that lead to the outside of a universe, local group, or system of thought. Yes, just like any of the physical insides that contain you, the thought-universe is voluminous, and the doors to the outside might be difficult to reach, but they are far more approachable than the impossible-to-reach doors of the physical universe that contains you.
Our most fundamental perspective provides a view of an interior. Now, don’t get claustrophobic. It’s a big interior, but, it is, nevertheless, an interior. There’s no door either opened or closed we can approach. Even in the great expanse of the galaxy we find ourselves and the galaxy “in” something.
Being “inside” will give some of us a sense of security and protection and others a sense of restriction. Being “inside,” is, however, a relative concept. We’re all inside the universe. We’re inside a local group of galaxies, inside a galaxy, and inside a Solar System. As I list them, they all encompass more to less volume, but still even the smallest is difficult to imagine. The volume of the Solar System alone is greater than 3,000,000 cubic Astronomical Units (Each is 93,000,000 miles cubed), and the sun’s influence might make a sphere with a diameter of four light years, so, the volume of our local “inside” might be 4/3 π 2LY^3. The numbers just get bigger with the galaxy and the Local Group. But they always remain finite. We’re always “inside.”
From the womb to the edges of the Local Group we’ve always been inside. So, “inside” shouldn’t, one might think, make us claustrophobic. Yet, many of us are. That psychological state is difficult, but not impossible, to overcome. Interesting, isn’t it, that it usually results from our physical circumstances?
There is another kind of being inside that we often pay little attention to: Being inside a thought pattern, particularly inside someone else’s patterned way of thinking. All of us have been subject to such an “inside,” but many of us—maybe all—don’t even recognize that we are inside a philosophy, a worldview. And we often remain inside without any feeling of being closed in. Maybe this is the "inside" that should make us feel claustrophobic.
You might not be able “to get outside” the physical universe, but you do have some doors—often hard to open—that lead to the outside of a universe, local group, or system of thought. Yes, just like any of the physical insides that contain you, the thought-universe is voluminous, and the doors to the outside might be difficult to reach, but they are far more approachable than the impossible-to-reach doors of the physical universe that contains you.
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