They say in the Upanishads, those ancient texts of Hinduism, they say: Tat Tvam Asi. You’re it! Ha! You are everything that’s going on. In other words, you are a partiucular place in which the whole universe is focused.
– Alan Watts, see this video on FaceBook
For me, there are two different parts to this.
One is that to me, I am everything that’s gong on. My nature is capacity for every experience I have and am. The world and universe as I experience it happens within and as my sense fields. The universe, to me, happens within and as what I am. This is something I can explore in my own first-person experience and find for myself.
The other is that I am a particular place in which the whole universe is focused.
As this human self, I am a part of the seamless and dynamic whole of the universe, a holon in a wast holarcy.
Every experience, thought, feeling, action, state, and so on, that I experience (and am, in that moment), has innumerable causes stretching back to the beginning of time (if there is a beginning) and out to the widest extent of the universe (if there is a boundary). What’s here as this human self – and any experiences and activities of this human self – is created by the universe as a whole.
As Carl Sagan said, I am the local eyes, ears, thoughts, and feelings of the universe. I am the universe bringing itself into consciousness.
This is something I can find within stories, including western science, the universe story, the epic of evolution, and so on.