What is the purpose of the universe? What is its center? The answer to both questions is none other than human beings. This is why God, after creating human beings, commanded them to have dominion over the universe (Gen. 1:28).
If there were no people to appreciate the universe, then it could be likened to a museum without any visitors. The articles on display in a museum attain their true value and are cherished as historical relics only when there are people who appreciate, love and take delight in them. Their relationship with human beings gives value to their existence. If there were no one to appreciate them, then what meaning would their existence have? The same holds true for the universe, whose lords are human beings.
The diverse things in creation enter into mutual relationships with a common purpose when human beings discover the source and nature of matter, and when they identify and classify plants and animals of the water, land and air, and all the stars in the sky.
Their common purpose is realized when they are assimilated into the human body as elements essential for people to maintain their physiological functions, and when they participate in the construction of a comfortable living environment for people. In these and other ways, human beings stand as the center of the created universe in terms of its external form. In addition, people relate to the universe from their position as the internal center. While the relationships discussed above are physical relationships, here we consider mental or spiritual relationships.
The human body, though consisting of matter, fully responds physiologically to the emotion, intellect and will of the human mind. This demonstrates that matter has within itself elements which resonate with emotion, intellect and will – elements which constitute the internal nature of matter.
This is the reason all things in the universe respond to human emotion, intellect and will, albeit to different degrees. We become intoxicated with the beauty of the natural world and experience the rapture of mystical union.
We experience this because we are the center of the internal natures of all things in the natural world. Human beings are thus created as the center of the universe, and the place where God and human beings become completely one is the center of the cosmos. |