I’ve spoken here before about how space is nested due to how consciousness self-interacts. Each more localized level of creation arises from progressively more locally aware consciousness, creating layers nested within each other. Think of how your attention shifts from looking at scenery to looking at your phone. The phone is much more localized but exists within the larger context of the environment, even if you’re not aware of it in that moment. Looking at a fork also exists as a distinct awareness within the same larger context. Of course, we don’t usually recognize these as separate spaces until we can see the dynamics of consciousness itself.
I’ve also spoken about how time is nested due to that process of experience taking place within those nested spaces.
That is then reflected in the structure of all of our experiences. For example, this from a talk at Stanford on Vastu architecture:
“The entire universe is nested structures, all organized according to natural law.”
Jon Lipman
Maharishi Vastu Architect
He goes on to say that “Architecture is enclosed space for a purpose“, such as a home or hospital. It’s an enclosed space within a larger space; nested.
The same nesting happens both at progressive scales and progressive resolutions. For example, our body is composed of cells which are composed of molecules, many of which it can build. The molecules are composed of atoms and so forth. Each stage of scale is another nesting.
Similarly, we’re energetically nested. Within Atman is the bliss body. Within that is the intellect, then the mind, then the emotions, and finally our physical body. Each is nested within the prior. These are called koshas or sheaths or energy bodies.
This also reflects how we’re interconnected. The cells gain their atoms to make molecules from the environment which is the body. The body gains it’s atoms from it’s environment. The cells are unaware of how the body gains those atoms, just as we are only partly aware of how those atoms come to exist in our environment.
Within Atman is all beings and within the bliss “body” is all beings in this universe. While we may seem to have physically distinct bodies, the energy bodies that structure our physical body interact in the energy environment around us in innumerable ways.
The deeper you go, the more connected, unified, and whole we are. And that continues, whatever our experience.
Davidya