A reflection of you?

The human brain, it is said, contains 100 billion nerve cells, or neurons, though I don’t imagine anyone’s ever tried to count them one-by-one. Each neuron is also said to have about 10,000 connections to its sister nerve cells. Multiply 10,000 times 100 billion, and you end up with a very large number.

It is stated rather point blank by a number of religious and metaphysical systems, and even by some theories of quantum reality, that all minds are joined, that there is indeed a connection between each one of us. There is no separation, but only a unified whole. According to these speculations, it’s as if each cell is connected to every other cell.

The Net of Indra, a concept from India, envisions each individual as a multifaceted mirror or gem with a great number of reflective surfaces. Through these mirrors, I reflect every other being in the cosmos, and every other being reflects me as well.  Emplaced in a web, or net, each of us acts as a reflecting network for every other being.

Besides having the obvious advantage of seeing that every other being is simply a projection – or reflection – of myself, this metaphor, if it reflects reality, has the added benefit of showing that we are each connected in an infinite array in which each individual can and does have a relationship with every other being in the substrate we call the universe.

Assume, for purposes of our brain analogy, that the connections we enjoy with complete strangers on the other side of the world (or perhaps even on the far side of the galaxy or the universe) are as instant and immediate and fast as the connections we each enjoy with friends and intimates.

The advantages are numerous: you see what each and every being sees when they see it, know what each and every mind knows at the same moment in which they know it. You have instant access to all data in the cosmos in a moment. This is true if the connections are not attenuated, if all minds are joined together in a network of instant and equal access. It is as if you were the entire universe, and everything in it.

Quantum theory, and experimental observations which support that theory, describe something called nonlocal cause. It’s been shown that, once the unity of a particle has been split, what happens to one ‘daughter’ particle instantaneously happens to the other particle, without regard to the distance between the particles. And these simultaneous happenings occur within the same instant, without regard to time, violating even the principle that nothing travels faster than light.

Information theorists also hypothesize that spacetime, matter and energy have the ability to store and transmit data, like a vast computer. Matter, Energy, Time and Space, sometimes called the METS continuum, have an upper limit of information they can hold. If this is so, then since you are part of that system, as an aspect of Indra’s Net, you have equal access to all information in that system. The common wisdom is your wisdom. Advanced knowledge belongs to you as well. You are, in a very real sense, the Universe Itself.

What one knows, all know. What one sees and hears, all can see and hear. And it happens without regard to space, without regard to time. The principal of nonlocality described in quantum physics means that access to information is equal and instantaneous. The repository of consciousness is collective, as the famous psychiatrist, C. G. Jung, described. This could explain many things, from psychic phenomenon, to the uncanny similarity of myths between cultures, to the repeating archetypes individuals experience in dreams and visions, regardless of historical era or civilization.

It also means that whatever a champion accomplishes, she attains not for herself alone. You own a piece of it. Whatever one of us does or experiences belongs to us all.

Is there a downside to all this? Well, it also might mean that whenever someone stumbles, that one stumbles for us all. We all participate equally in the mistakes of each person. None of us can reach higher than the loftiest without bringing everyone else along for the leap. Nor can one fall lower than the lowest without dragging the rest of us along. All of us participate in the glory, but in the injustice and cruelty as well. These notions were much more aptly phrased in the epic poem, The Prophet, by the poet, Kahlil Gibran.

The impacts of these instant and equal connections between us may seem hard to take. It’s difficult for any one mind to look out at the world and all its seeming corruption and war and poverty and take responsibility for it, for what that single mind sees. But the truth is that, if we are all joined in equally intimate connection, then we all share the responsibility for what we see, for what we create with our eyes and ears, and the thoughts which underly our perceptions.

It’s probably just as hard for each of us to claim that we’re worthy of the spoils of the hero, that we all landed on the moon and walked its surface when the first astronaut did, that we each had a hand in painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel or helped lead entire nations to freedom. In the littleness and guilt which is the byproduct of perceiving ourselves as individual egos running around on just two legs, with ends in space as well as in time, we don’t really feel the right to the achievement of the greatest among us. We don’t consider ourselves worthy.

And then there’s this: to experience the benefits of a collective Self, we each have to relinquish the idea of a private self with individual thoughts jacketed and sealed up from the rest of humanity. We’ve invested a great deal in our individual freedoms, in our exclusive accomplishments and sole possessions. And so, we say, let each individual flourish or perish on their own island. For these reasons, most of us prefer to pawn all the greatness and pettiness off on someone else. Instead of living in Indra’s Net, we pretend we see in the reflections of another, not ourselves, but an other with whom we may have little or no connection. Be condemned and punished alone. Be born alone. Die into aloneness.

After all, who wants to believe we are great or terrible. It’s too much responsibility either way. Leave that to a god, or a hero, or at the very least a professional athlete. Bequeath the spoils, good or bad, to Michael Jordan.

So it’s not us that’s participating in the crimes that we believe deserve sentence. It’s not you that summits a mountain or helps save the world from disease. We pretend that the reflections of ourselves we see in others are mirrors not of ourselves, but alienated individuals, each warring to survive. Eat or be eaten becomes the law. Unable to tolerate our equal intimacy with our enemies as well as with our lovers, we deny the connection. We each pretend to walk the world alone.

It seems easier to us to be housed in separate skins of different colors, to be assigned gender and class and to revel in those differences between us, than it does to tolerate the fact that each of us is a representation of the whole, with access to all awareness. We forfeit the gravity of wisdom and the beauty of love’s sharing itself with itself.

The choice is each of ours: be All, or just be you.

© 2025 by Michael C. Just

Mike’s novel, The Dirt: The Journey of a Mystic Cowboy, is available in softcover or eBook formats through Amazon.

You can purchase the book through this website. Or go straight to amazon at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=the+dirt+journey+of+a+mystic+cowboy&crid=1S40Q4BXSUWJ6&sprefix=the+dirt%3A+journey+of+a+m%2Caps%2C180&ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_23

Mike’s other titles, including The Crippy, The Mind Altar, and Canyon Calls, are available through this website or through Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B002

Four of his short stories have recently been published online:

Lies, Ltd. has been published by The Mystery Tribune @ Lies, Ltd.: Literary Short Fiction by Michael C. Just (mysterytribune.com)

The Obligate Carnivore has been published by the Scarlet Leaf Review @ Category: MICHAEL JUST – SCARLET LEAF REVIEW

I See You, Too has been published by the 96th of October @ I See You, Too – 96th of October

Offload, a short story about a man who can heal any disease, is now live and can be read at The Worlds Within at Offload – The Worlds Within