The Three Worlds

Skovoroda divides reality into three interlocking worlds. The first is the macrocosm, the great universe of all things. The second is the microcosm, the human being, who astonishingly contains that universe within. The third is the symbolic world of the Bible, a world of images that are not to be read literally, because they are signs pointing a finger at the invisible God. Each world has a visible "nature" and, hidden beneath it, a divine depth, and the sage's task is to see the invisible through the visible. The scheme is inherited from the Neoplatonists and the Christian mystics, yet Skovoroda turns it into a practical key: learn to read the three books at once – the world, yourself, and Scripture – and you begin to see the one Word that wrote all three.