"The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us – there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries."
– Carl Sagan, Cosmos
This is an article on what this quote means to me. Not anyone else. I can't and won't speak for anyone else.
It's so easy to pretend, sitting on the couch, that the everyday occurrences throughout the Universe don't affect us. The fact that you can't even look up while in the city (because of light pollution) doesn't help matters. But the Universe isn't "out there". It's just an amplified version of science at everyday scales, though that's not to say that what we're experiencing here on Earth is a dumbed–down version of what we could be experiencing. It would be an error on my part to say so, because Earth is intrinsically connected to the Universe. As are we. But that's just it. It's so easy to forget that this is where we came from, that ultimately, we all come from the same event that created the stars and galaxies.
We are the Cosmos, the Cosmos is us. But our lives have taken us away from it, what it truly is. That is why when we think about it, we feel the kind of exhilaration that doesn't happen everyday at the desk, because the desk came after the Cosmos. In our contemplations, we attempt to connect with the most primal parts of us: the parts that came from the nuclear furnaces of stars, the parts shrouded by our basic needs of survival and, too often to ignore, by our ego and pettiness.
The reality of our place in the Universe can be maintained, however. By stepping outside, at the very least, and traveling into interstellar or intergalactic space, at most. (Yes, I know the impossibility of that. That's why I said "at most".) These are better methods than any to get even an inkling of the significance we hold in the Universe (and even that is close to none).
The existence of the Universe is like a big chemical reaction. Here, we're intermediates, a temporary result of the initial conditions that set our Universe into motion.
"Anyone who does not...Gaze up and see the wonder...Of a dark night sky filled with countless stars loses a sense of their fundamental connectedness to the Universe."
– Dr. Brian Greene
For mankind, the quote holds true, i.e. cosmos is all that is, was and will be. But strictly speaking, it hasn't been here forever, nor will it last forever. True, our arrival didn't have and passing will not have any impact on on the cosmos. But we are a part of it and the search for the "beginning" must go on, both at scientific as well as philosophical levels. Outside AND inside of us. Never forget the question that gave rise to this quest - कोऽहं...
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