inner and outer space

on feeling cosmic

Jul 25, 2025

“…we are “the carriers of the central jewel, the flashing purpose that lights up the whole dark universe.” - You Are the Universe, Deepak Chopra

To answer the common question “What are you a fan of?”, I have found myself coming up with a variety of answers which would be easily accepted by the person asking. Certainly, I am a fan of food, of music, or art, of a plethora of things. Yet, at once, I am not a fan of any one specific thing or person, perhaps except for space. In fact, in the same manner that one may be a fan of an artist or an actor or an athlete, I have always been a fan of space - that is, both inner and outer space.

What do I mean by this? To some extent, I do mean the ‘space’ which you may imagine under the term initially - be it stars, planets, galaxies or other elements of our cosmos - however, I do also mean ‘space’ in its most simple definition. I am referring to an area which is free, unoccupied, within which things and people can exist and move. This definition is true for a variety of things. Primarily, we can consider it to be true for the universe, where things are free to move in the expanse of darkness. Within it, we occupy only a small dot, yet we are the majority of what we know.

Frequently, I come to think of the famous essay by Carl Sagan where he speaks of our planet as a “pale blue dot”. He explores this concept to interpret a photograph taken by NASA, and humanity’s presence on Earth within it as a miniscule and ephemeral existence amidst the cosmos. Our blue dot is the only home we have ever known, and it is the only one we believe to be able to have. Even with its almost irrelevant size within the cosmos, it has essential relevance to us. Still, we cannot help ourselves but marvel at what is beyond our dot - what is out there beyond our atmosphere. We stare at the sky, at the clouds passing by, and let our mind wander and fantasise about what may exist there in space. The same occurs at a smaller scale. Our body is our own dot within this world, a miniscule existence amidst all else on this planet. It is the only home we know, and we spend time marveling at all that is beyond it. We stare at the world around us, and imagine what must be on its other end - what the space must be like there. The similarity in this runs as deep as structural similarity between our brain and the cosmos, which has become a crucial topic in recent neuroscience research. Simply put, our brain is not merely a biological organ within our body, but a system that structurally and functionally resembles the principles which construct the cosmos and are able to bend space and time.

Let me return to staring, though. This act of staring in itself, is space. And it is closer to the kind of space I am a fan of. Whether we stare at the sea, or at the sky, or at the fields, or at the forest, we create space for ourselves. We exist in space, in the space of this world which exists in the space of this cosmos, but we also create space. In the act of staring we create metaphorical space where our eyes are allowed to adjust to the lack of stimuli. By doing so we give our thinking machine an opportunity to function less as a machine constantly running at full speed, but more as a mirror of the cosmos which is given space to exist and move freely. Our mind stills and turns inwards.

In a world of constant pressure to perform and work and act, we place never-ending demands on our brains to function as a computer with rigid guidelines for input and output. There is not much room given for expansion and bending. If we return, however, to the brain-cosmos parallel, and if we consider our brain and cosmos to truly resemble each other, what we say about our brain being our personal universe may be less of a metaphor than we thought. Thus, we should also consider our brain to have the same expanding and bending capabilities and requirements which the cosmos has. We should be giving it space to do what it needs to do.

And this is the space that I am a fan of. I fear that once I stopped trying to constantly occupy myself and my brain with anything to do, that was when my brain was able to start working to more of its true potential. To be sincere, at first, giving yourself space to do things is incredibly hard. For an extrovert it may be even harder to take refuge from the world to be with oneself and to let space expand within and around oneself. The need to constantly do something is large. Yet, you must persevere and give yourself that space, and allow the cosmos within you to take shape as it needs to. This may naturally lead you to think more, to spiral more, to spiral less, to read and need to absorb information, to write and need to expel information, to peoplewatch, to stare mindlessly, to be bored. Whatever shape and form of existence your inner cosmos needs to take on when you give it space needs, it will get there eventually. Your space may get decorated in the process, it may shrink, it may expand or bend.

I love spending time alone and “feeling cosmic”. There is a certain kind of magic in spending a lot of time by yourself, not expelling energy speaking to people, not letting your energy be sucked away by devices and technology. It is in those moments that you get to see your space take shape. Your consciousness and the cosmos become more evidently similar, and you get to go on more inward galactic explorations of the external universe that is within you - your own personal slice of the vast intelligence that is the Universe.