If we allegorize our galaxy, composed of approximately four hundred billion stars, as a human body, the stars can be likened to the cells or organs in a body.
Just as the liver possesses its own unique structure, processor, organic consciousness, and a mission that it attempts to accomplish with these means, so too the stars, which are like the cells or organs in the gigantic galactic body, are endowed with a conscious level of life.
When earth is viewed from space, neither plants, nor animals nor any humans can be seen. Earth appears merely to be a separate ‘mass’ of matter. It is however, inhabited by humans, animals, plants and other species, that are all equipped with unique properties and further sub-divided within themselves accordingly.
In the same way, the galactic structure can also be viewed as an individual body, an entity with a personality! This galactic structure, that we call ‘The Milky way’, is actually a living unit, a life form, only perceived as such by another galactic structure, not by us.
Just as humanity has consciousness, so does the earth. The structure that we refer to as the ‘earth’ also possesses consciousness that is specific to it.
Just as the earth has consciousness, so does the sun, and just as the sun is conscious, so is our galaxy!
The consciousness of the sun, in comparison to the galactic consciousness, is like the consciousness of a single cell in our body, in contrast to our consciousness. Our galaxy subsists in the universe as a conscious individual being, amongst millions of other such galaxies!
The constellations, that are associated to the zodiacal signs, are also conscious cosmic beings with unique characters. Muhyiddin ibn al-Arabi refers to these cosmic beings in his Meccan Revelations (Futuhat al-Makkiyya) as ‘the angels residing in the 12 constellations’. When we state that there are billions of galaxies in the cosmos, what we’re actually saying is that there are billions of conscious entities within the galactic realms of the cosmos!
So, if the similitude of the sun, in respect to the galaxy, is like a single cell in respect to our whole body, then to even try and comprehend the place of the earth, let alone an individual living on earth, is almost impossible!
Indeed, to expound the place of a human being in respect to a star, or a star in respect to the galactic body in which it dwells, is quite a challenge. We have always put our limited senses to work in the exploration of ‘sub-matter’ and pursued the path to the microcosm, without really evaluating ‘supra-matter’ and the macrocosm.
How could we have? This is like trying to view the human body from the nucleus, or from a chromosome within the nucleus of a cell! How can a single gene, on a chromosome within the nucleus of a single cell, have a complete view of the body it inhabits? Clearly, this is not possible. It can’t even see or comprehend a single organ in the body! The cytoplasm, surrounding the nucleus in which it lives, would seem like an infinite ocean to this gene!
Based on this then, it is senseless to say that the space between a particular planet and a star is empty, or void.