Little Big Cosmos

Apparently, one of the oldest ideas in man's mythic talebox is that he himself is a lil' cosmos -- a microcosm, or "cosmos in miniature." 

Imagine a group of cavemen sitting around the campfire, and one of our venerable furbears puts forth the idea for the first time:

A human person unites in itself all the levels of the universe from the depths of matter to the transcendence of spirit and is capable of union with God himself and thereby mirroring the unity of the cosmos itself (Clarke).

The verdict of his astoneaged listeners is immediate and unanimous: CAN WE BUY SOME POT FROM YOU?!

It seems to me that this primordial notion is carried forward in the principle that man is somehow created in the image of his Creator -- or that the part mirrors the Whole. Every part must do so to some extent, but in the case of man, 

The complete perfection of the universe demands that there should be created natures which return to God (Aquinas).

If Thomas is correct, it means that we are not so much mirror as mirroring, or better yet, both verb and noun, process and substance.

Hence it comes to pass that the intellectual soul is said to be like the horizon or boundary line between corporeal and incorporeal substance... (ibid.).

This being the case, 

the ultimate perfection to which the soul can attain is that in it is reflected the whole order of the universe and its causes. This also, they [the philosophers] say, is the last end of man, which in our opinion will be attained in the vision of God (ibid.). 

You will have gnosissed that the intellect is indeed ordered to the Absolute, and that it is restless until it rests there, and even then, continues in its vertical movement, since we are not God.

Our intellect in knowing anything is extended to infinity. This ordering of the intellect to infinity would be vain and senseless if there were no infinite object of knowledge (ibid.).

Or, in the words of Schuon,

The worth of man lies in his consciousness of the Absolute.... the things of this world are never proportionate to the actual range of our intelligence. Our intelligence is made for the Absolute, or else it is nothing. The Absolute alone confers on our intelligence the power to accomplish to the full what it can accomplish and to be wholly what it is.

So near and yet so far:

In fact, what separates man from divine Reality is but a thin partition: God is infinitely close to man, but man is infinitely far from God (ibid.).

D'oh! Well, what are you going to do about it? 

The way towards God always involves an inversion: from outwardness one must pass to inwardness, from multiplicity to unity, from dispersion to concentration, from egoism to detachment, from passion to serenity (ibid.).

Now, back to Clarke. In the Platonic tradition, man as such isn't a mirror, rather, only the purified soul that transcends and escapes from its entrapment in materiality. Neoplatonism culminates in the ascent to the One, whereas Christianity inverts this one-way cosmic path and involves a descent from God all the way down into matter. 

Such divine coondescension would be inconceivable for Plato, and we ourselves would have difficulty believing it if it didn't happen and weren't happening. Thus, 

the early Christian thinkers transformed the concept to celebrate the great dignity and glory of the human person as the central piece, or "lynchpin," of the universe...

And again, we are in (vertical) motion: 

the human soul is the "traveler" of the universe. All other kinds of being are fixed by nature in their paths; only the human soul can choose to be, to live, on whatever level it wishes, from total absorption in matter to the highest spiritual union with the One.

Man is avant garde, as it were, "truly a being that 'lives on the edge,' on the frontier, between matter and spirit, time and eternity."

To be continued...