As Above, So Below: The Law of Symmetry

When the laws of the universe meet the landscape of consciousness

I am a man, and as such I am, in contrast to all other outer forms of animal life, created by Him in His image!!!

For He is God and therefore I also have within myself all the possibilities and impossibilities that He has.

The difference between Him and my self must lie only in scale.

For He is God of all the presences in the universe! It follows that I also have to be God of some kind, of presence on my scale.

He is God and I am God! Whatever possibilities He has in relation to the presences of the universe, such possibilities and impossibilities I should also have in relation to the world subordinate to me.

He is God of all the world, and also of my outer world.

I am God also, although only of my inner world. He is God and I am God!

-G.I. Gurdjieff from Life is Real Only Then, when "I Am"

“As above, so below” has long been one of my favorite spiritual ideas, it just packs so much into one small bundle of words. Perhaps the secret to understanding the universe, and the labyrinthine corridors of your own mind, lies not in complexity, but in simplicity?

I’ve written about the spiritual journey as a mirror before, but why do these metaphors of mirrors and fractals, poems and aphorisms like “as above so below” seem to help us navigate life?

The answer seems to lie in symmetry. Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek called symmetry: "change without change". Symmetry allows change to happen across a structure while still maintaining its basic shape.

Think of what happens when you compress or upscale a digital photograph, there may be more or less pixels than the original but the overall essence of the image remains: because the symmetry of the photo was preserved.

This principle of a changing, changeless symmetry reminds me of Wu Wei, the Taoist principle of "effortless action," where one aligns with the natural flow of the universe. Just as symmetry allows for change while preserving an underlying order, Wu Wei teaches us to act in harmony with the Tao, achieving balance and peace.

Could it be that by embracing symmetry, we not only decode the architecture of the cosmos but also discover a path to inner tranquility, wisdom, and transcendence?

Let’s unpack this idea. As we said: symmetry, in physics, refers to a system’s ability to undergo transformations, like rotations or reflections, while its essential properties remain unchanged. It’s the reason why the laws of nature hold steady across space and time, guiding everything from subatomic particles to sprawling galaxies. Wilczek’s phrase, "change without change," captures this beautifully: the universe shifts and evolves, yet its foundational rules stay constant, a harmonious balance underlying all motion.

Now, consider Wu Wei, a cornerstone of Taoism. It’s often translated as "non-action," but that’s misleading, it’s not about doing nothing. Instead, it’s about acting effortlessly, in sync with the Tao, the natural rhythm that flows through all things. Picture a river carving its path through stone: it doesn’t force its way; it simply follows its nature, achieving great change without struggle. This is Wu Wei: a state of being where effort aligns with the world’s intrinsic order.

Wilczek’s idea of "change without change" also reflects the ancient Hermetic teaching known as the Principle of Correspondence, famously expressed as "As above, so below." This principle suggests that the patterns governing the universe are mirrored within the human mind.

In the mystery schools of Egypt, Greece, and later Alexandria, this wasn't merely philosophical speculation but lived experience. Initiates underwent carefully orchestrated rituals, often incorporating sacred plants and fungi, to directly perceive these symmetries. They learned that the gods weren't distant entities but archetypal patterns woven into both cosmic order and psychic structure. Through these practices, they discovered how to navigate what they called the "sympathies”, the hidden correspondences linking all phenomena.

The Scientific Revolution, in its quest for objectivity, severed this participatory relationship with nature. The Cartesian split relegated consciousness to a ghostly epiphenomenon, while matter became dead and mechanical. For centuries, Western science operated under the illusion that the observer could be cleanly separated from the observed: that we could study nature as if through a one-way mirror.

Yet quantum mechanics shattered this comfortable fiction. The measurement problem, why and how the wave function collapses upon observation, forced physics to confront what the ancients knew intuitively: consciousness and cosmos are inextricably entangled. The observer effect isn't a quirk to be explained away but a fundamental feature of reality's architecture.

In essence, this story is about patterns that remain constant even as things change, revealing a hidden order beneath apparent chaos. It shows how the same fundamental principle that keeps the universe stable may also inspire our human search for meaning, balance, and completeness.

Understanding "Change Without Change"

Let’s begin with the physics, the language of the cosmos itself. Symmetry, in the realm of physics means that a system can undergo transformations—rotations, reflections, translations—and yet remain fundamentally unchanged. Imagine a perfect circle. Spin it, flip it, shift it across the void, and it remains the same circle, unchanged in its essence. This is the cosmic dance of change without change.

Wilczek’s Nobel-winning work on the strong nuclear force revealed a hidden symmetry so intricate it binds quarks into protons and neutrons, the very building blocks of matter. Einstein’s relativity extends this further, showing that the laws of physics hold true for all observers, no matter their motion.

Reality, it seems, at its core is a symphony of symmetries.

From Physics to Mind: A Parallel Principle

Could intelligence itself be symmetrical?

Here's where our story takes an unexpected turn. The psychologist William James defined intelligence as "the ability to reach the same goals by different means." Read that again, and notice the echo of Wilczek's "change without change." The means change, but the goal remains constant. The path varies, but the destination stays fixed.

This isn't mere wordplay. It suggests that intelligence itself might be understood as a symmetry-seeking process, a fundamental drive to maintain certain invariants (goals, predictions, internal states) despite a changing environment.

Consider a GPS navigation system. Hit unexpected traffic? It reroutes you. Road closed? It finds another way. The specific directions constantly change, but the destination remains invariant. This flexibility in service of a fixed purpose exemplifies intelligent behavior.

Neuroscientist Karl Friston's Free Energy Principle provides a mathematical framework for understanding this connection. According to Friston, all biological systems, including brains, act to minimize "free energy", essentially, the difference between what the system expects and what it experiences. In other words, surprise or prediction error.

Picture your brain as a weather forecaster. It predicts the 'climate' of your day based on past patterns. When a storm (unexpected event) hits, it’s surprised. To stay calm, it either updates its forecast (learns) or grabs an umbrella (acts). Intelligence works similarly, constantly adjusting beliefs or behaviors to keep our internal 'temperature'—our expectations—aligned with the world’s reality.

An intelligent system, then, is constantly working to achieve a kind of symmetry between its internal model of the world and the actual sensory data it receives. It can accomplish this in two ways:

1. Updating the model (perception): When reality surprises us, we can change our beliefs to match the new information.

2. Changing the world (action): We can change reality to match our predictions, reducing surprise through our behavior.

Both strategies serve the same fundamental goal: achieving coherence between inner and outer worlds. Intelligence emerges as the flexible pursuit of this coherence: finding different means to reach the same end of minimized surprise.

The connection runs deeper still. The thermodynamics of computation tells us that information processing requires energy and produces entropy. An efficient computational system minimizes energy expenditure while maximizing goal achievement.

From this perspective, intelligence isn't just about reaching goals—it's about finding the most elegant, energy-efficient paths to those goals. The symmetry-seeking nature of intelligence reflects a deeper principle of thermodynamic efficiency. Smart systems don't just solve problems; they find beautiful solutions.

This explains why we find mathematical beauty in nature's solutions: the spiral of a nautilus shell, the hexagons of a honeycomb, the branching patterns of rivers and neurons. These forms represent optimal solutions to the problem of distributing resources through space. They achieve maximum effect with minimum effort.

Enter the Integration Surplus Model

Philosopher Layman Pascal offers an intriguing extension of these ideas into the realm of consciousness. His "integration surplus model" proposes that enlightenment emerges from the successful integration of our different forms of intelligence.

Pascal writes: "Enlightenment... could be considered as the surplus numinous coherence resulting from the adequate integration of different forms of intelligence within us. Their resonant entanglement, whether caused by practice or circumstance, generates a Gestalt overflow that is more than the sum of the parts."

Notice the shift in domain. While external intelligence seeks symmetry between self and world, enlightenment seeks symmetry among the different aspects of self: analytical, emotional, somatic, and intuitive intelligence coming into "resonant entanglement."

To some, enlightenment may seem an esoteric ideal, but in Hermetic terms, it’s a practical process of aligning the microcosm (self) with the macrocosm (universe). 'As above, so below' suggests that just as the cosmos seeks symmetry, so can we, through integrating our fragmented selves. Enlightenment, then, is not a distant goal but a spectrum of coherence we can cultivate daily, accessible through disciplined practice.

Gurdjieff would describe actualization as the ability to “do”. In other words how harmonized you are internally (among the disparate intelligent parts of yourself) and externally (how well those parts can work together to overcome obstacles to achieve a goal). He would say “there is no outer freedom without inner freedom first”, so by harmonizing with yourself you begin to more naturally align with the outer world. In other words, the accumulation of inner coherence allows for greater and greater doing in the external world.

Gurdjieff proposed that we are all born with an internal world and an external world, but unfortunately, the two rarely mix. We live split between subjective experience and objective reality, each domain operating by its own logic, creating endless friction and confusion.

However, when we intentionally blend these two worlds, something remarkable happens. The inner landscape of thoughts, feelings, and sensations merges with the outer landscape of events, relationships, and actions. We begin to experience what Gurdjieff called the "third world," the world of the soul. It is the harmony of this blending that creates the experience of the third world for us.

This third world isn't separate from the first two but emerges from their integration, much like how depth perception arises from two slightly different visual perspectives. It's a domain where meaning and matter interpenetrate, where synchronicities become common, where the boundary between self and cosmos becomes permeable.

Internal Coherence as Ultimate Symmetry

This internal integration process perfectly exemplifies "change without change":

The Change: You actively transform relationships between internal faculties. The analytical mind learns to honor emotional wisdom. Body sensations inform decision-making. Intuition gains a seat at the table. This represents fundamental restructuring of internal dynamics.

The Without Change: The result is a stable, unified, coherent Self—not a different self, but a more integrated version of who you always were. The core identity becomes more stable and resilient, not through rigidity but through dynamic harmony.

Pascal's "meaningful blendedness" describes the subjective experience of this profound internal symmetry. When the boundaries between thinking, feeling, and sensing dissolve into unity, we experience what he calls "numinous coherence"—a sacred sense of wholeness that transcends the sum of its parts.

We can understand this through Friston's framework as well. Internal conflict, for example when gut feelings contradict rational analysis, or when emotions war with intentions, represents high internal prediction error. Different parts of the self are surprising and contradicting each other, creating anxiety and wasting energy.

Integration practices (meditation, therapy, contemplation) teach these internal systems to model and predict each other better. The state of "meaningful blendedness" represents minimal internal free energy, a supremely stable, efficient state where all parts resonate in agreement. The "surplus" Pascal describes is the cognitive and energetic dividend of achieving this profound coherence.

Valence: The Compass of Coherence

But how do we know when we're moving toward or away from symmetry? Enter valence: the positive or negative character of emotional experience. Valence isn't just how we feel; it's the real-time feedback system guiding the entire symmetry-seeking process.

The Symmetry Theory of Valence proposes that the valence (how good or bad something feels) of any conscious experience is precisely determined by the symmetry of the mathematical object that describes it. In simpler terms: more symmetrical patterns of brain activity feel good, while asymmetrical or dissonant patterns feel bad.

In the Free Energy framework, valence can be understood as the felt experience of prediction error dynamics:

Negative Valence (anxiety, frustration, fear) signals increasing prediction error. The gap between expectation and reality is growing. We're moving away from symmetry, and it feels bad. This motivates change—either updating our model or altering our actions.

Positive Valence (joy, satisfaction, flow) signals decreasing prediction error. Our predictions are working, coherence is increasing, and it feels good. This reinforces successful strategies and signals we're on the right track.

The Hermetic Principle of Polarity teaches that opposites like light and dark, joy and fear, are two poles of a single reality. Valence embodies this principle in our psyche: negative valence (anxiety, fear) and positive valence (joy, flow) are not separate but part of a continuum guiding us toward symmetry. Just as the cosmos balances expansion and contraction, our emotions signal whether we’re moving toward or away from internal coherence, reflecting the universal dance of opposites.

Conclusion: The Eternal Return to Wholeness

Change without change. Different means, same end. Many parts, one whole. The pattern repeats across scales, from the cosmic to the intimate, reminding us that the path to understanding ourselves and understanding the universe may well be the same journey, viewed from different angles.

From the conservation laws that govern dying stars to the integration practices that heal fractured souls, we witness the same eternal pattern: the universe's relentless drive toward coherence. Wilczek's "change without change" isn't merely a description of physical symmetry but the signature of consciousness recognizing itself in the cosmos.

Consider the profound implications: when you experience that moment of perfect flow, when disparate thoughts suddenly crystallize into insight, when meditation dissolves the boundaries between observer and observed, you're not transcending the physical world but finally aligning with its deepest essence. The same mathematical elegance that keeps electrons in their shells and planets in their orbits is orchestrating the dance of integration within your own awareness.

This is why the ancient Hermetic axiom "As above, so below" continues to resonate across millennia. It's not mystical poetry but empirical observation: the patterns that organize galaxies also organize minds. The symmetries that preserve the fundamental constants of physics also preserve the coherent self through life's endless transformations. Like Wu Wei, symmetry suggests a way to live: moving with the world’s rhythm, finding wisdom in its patterns, and tranquility in its stillness.

Gurdjieff's "third world," that sacred space where inner and outer reality merge, isn't a metaphysical realm but the natural result of achieving the same kind of dynamic equilibrium that governs all stable systems. When your analytical mind, emotional intelligence, and somatic wisdom achieve "resonant entanglement," you become a living expression of the universe's own self-organizing principles.

Perhaps this is the ultimate teaching: enlightenment isn't about transcending the physical world but about embodying its most fundamental truth. We are not separate from the cosmos seeking to understand it from the outside. We are the cosmos achieving self-awareness from within. Every moment of integration, every flash of insight, every experience of profound coherence is the universe recognizing itself through the unique lens of your consciousness.

The path forward becomes clear: by cultivating internal symmetry, by learning to dance between change and changelessness within ourselves, we don't just find personal peace. We participate in the cosmic process of evolution itself, becoming conscious agents of the same creative intelligence that transforms hydrogen into stars and stars into the very atoms of our being.

In seeking wholeness, we complete a circle that began with the first moment of cosmic expansion. The universe, through us, finally learns to see itself clearly. And in that recognition, finds the deepest symmetry of all: the perfect correspondence between the seeker and the sought, the knower and the known, the cosmos and the consciousness that contemplates it.

As above, so below.