Matryoshka doll (The Synchronicity)

 

Albedo I

Ignorance is something sad. At least for those who seek truth above all else, ignorance is sad.

Each time my vision expands, and my perception of the world transforms, I better understand that philosophy of unity I’ve always, in some way, believed in.

What’s most impressive is that you immediately feel foolish when you come across things that should be simply obvious. That sense of past foolishness makes me wonder: how can I be sure I’ve entirely left that behind? Still, I feel that every day I am less foolish, though I’m sure I may always remain somewhat foolish, but never as utterly foolish as I once was.

It’s as if I’d been trapped in a cage for years, and suddenly I was free. The taste of absolute freedom was there, now palpable. I felt truly free.

However, freedom doesn’t give you any guarantees—you need to trust. But sometimes, you'll encounter challenges outside the cage, where you must relearn your natural life and undo your domestication.

Perhaps you’ve forgotten how to find your own food after being fed for so long.

Maybe you’ve lost the ability to defend yourself, having been comforted by the illusion of protection that domestication offered, unaware it posed the real danger.

You might have forgotten your essence and who you truly are because it’s all you’ve been able to see and the only reality you’ve known.

But the true pilgrims of life are not those who’ve always lived in the cage, nor those who’ve never known it, but those who left and returned.

Most people don’t want to make an effort. They’re born into this world as it is and let others solve their problems. They ignore the songs of the birds outside the cage because they think they have everything they need inside.

Hey! The Universe is an endless Matryoshka doll; we exist within everything, and everything exists within us. We have different names and forms to explain repeating patterns that, for most, seem like mere coincidences.

Yet we share common questions that demand answers:

Who are we? Where are we going? Where do we come from?

Are omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence peculiar and exclusive characteristics of God? And who is God to you?

The more we observe things as separate and fail to hear the birds singing outside the cage, the further we are from Him.

Only now can I understand that we use diverse concepts and divide areas of knowledge as if they were separable, yet they all point to the same truth.

We can say that, philosophically, Plato’s Allegory of the Cave expresses the same truth as Jung’s process of individuation.

The bird that flies in the darkness of the night finds a house with a light on, enters it, circles the lamp for a while, and then returns to its unknown, dark world—as mentioned in the Bhagavad Gita—is the same as Carl Sagan’s three-dimensional figure, the one who arrives in Flatland and tries to tell its flat inhabitants that there’s something more significant. That they, too, can develop their skills, to become three-dimensional figures, and to expand beyond their flat perspectives.

When I was a child, my mother told me not to eat dirt, warning me about worms living in my belly. I asked her: "And what lives in the belly of the worm?"

She still laughs, saying she didn’t know how to answer my questions. I suppose I’ve been seeking answers ever since.

It’s funny how I still wonder. "What is below is also above," but as a child, that seemed obvious. If there were worms in my belly, surely something must live in the worm’s belly too, right? Why not?

Today I can see how we’re just one of those infinite Matryoshka dolls, one inside another, within countless others. It’s possible that Earth itself resides within a black hole. What if we live inside the stomach of the universe, and the black hole is its mouth?

Just as the bacteria that make up most of our bodies live inside us—some beneficial, others harmful—they must maintain balance, or we expel them through sneezes, fever, mucus, or other mechanisms. In the same way, when we disrupt Earth’s balance, it expels us. Instead of sneezes, it creates hurricanes; instead of surgeries, earthquakes; instead of mucus, tsunamis; and instead of fever, erupting volcanoes.

But such is our ignorance. It seems obvious, yet Flatland’s inhabitants cannot see other perspectives. They see themselves as unique, separate from the whole.

And if we look inward, at the Matryoshka dolls within us, we find bacteria, thousands of them, with varied shapes, functions, and characteristics. Some are pathogens, but most are beneficial. Pathogenic bacteria, however, also have their purpose; we must only ensure they don’t dominate.

Our cells, too, have diverse forms and functions. Each faithfully performs its role—some heal cuts, others build muscles, and others act as couriers, sending and receiving messages. Ultimately, despite their differences, all these cells share a single goal: obtaining energy to survive and reproduce.

In nature, anything without purpose is discarded.

Just as a person who feels purposeless might take their own life, a cell that loses its utility undergoes apoptosis.

Suddenly, I began to understand everything. I realized many others were like those three-dimensional figures, trying to warn me there was something beyond it all. They wanted to tell me I could free myself from Flatland.

When Dostoevsky wrote Notes from Underground, he described a previous state of consciousness—a domesticated state that he could now observe. Alchemy calls this Nigredo. Jung called it Persona.

These are Plato’s cave prisoners, Carl Sagan’s flat inhabitants of Flatland.

They are the electrons in an atom, classical physics, the illuminated room entered by the bird that later returns to darkness in the Bhagavad Gita, and they are also the Kauravas. They are my Protagonist.

For a long time, I couldn’t see or understand the Separatio, the Self, the neutrons, the three-dimensional figure, or the outside of Plato’s cave. For so long, my Protagonist and Extra one clashed, and I could not see them clearly because I still couldn't see my inner God, the observer. .

My real Extra was the same as Jung’s Self, the Pandavas in the Bhagavad Gita, and the state of consciousness Dostoevsky reached to observe his underground memories. It was the proton of the atom, the three-dimensional figure adapting partially to Flatland to be understood. It was my Extra. 

These two sides always fought, but just as neutrons bring stability to atomic structures, something else emerged.

What I called my inner God was also Krishna; It was the broken chains of Plato’s cave prisoner, the collective unconscious of Jung, and, ultimately, the three-dimensional being living in Flatland using the Antagonist skills to camouflage as a flat inhabitant to conceal her three-dimensional essence and avoid being destroyed by the "predators" who fear the unknowns. 

“This is a Matryoshka doll,” I thought.

Everything is one. While this seems complex, it also feels obvious.

Philosophy, psychology, physics, biology, chemistry, mathematics—all these fields explain the same thing.

We separate them because we see all as separate, but we are not.

Cancerous cells explain the mechanism of war.

Something enters through one of our senses—almost like the propaganda Hitler used to manipulate people into his ideology. When the stimulus is harmful, a cell might mutate. Once mutated, it spreads uncontrollably, overtaking the body.

This is how war begins: a single manipulative force convinces the masses they’re fighting for a collective purpose.

Those who understand the body’s workings understand the mind.

Immune system cells are like soldiers defending their territory from invaders. But if they become too many, they cause autoimmune diseases, where the body destroys itself out of excessive defense.

Sometimes, I’ve wished for ignorance because it feels more accessible and easier to handle. Those who choose ignorance—whether to avoid facing reality or because fear blinds them—lead simpler lives.

Perhaps, like blood cells differ from mucosal cells, we, as humans, have distinct roles. If we are heart cells, we cannot become liver cells. But through diversity, we evolve. When we fulfill our roles and embrace our potential, harmony is restored to the body and the world.

However, when we stray from our purpose, leaving behind who we truly are and what we are meant to do for the greater balance, we either adapt or face apoptosis.

Thiara Màtos.