The Living Universe

by Duane Elgin

  What Are Your Near Gifts and True Gifts? (see Chapter 8)

  We face enormous challenges and will have to re-invent the world in which we live—including where and how we work, community life and structure, education, food systems, transportation, and more. Now is not the time for half-hearted contributions—the world needs our greatest talents. What are your greatest gifts? We all have “near gifts,” or things that we are pretty good at doing. In addition, we each have “true gifts” that express our unique talents, interests, and abilities. What are your true gifts? In what ways could your true gifts be in service of humanity’s future?

  With reflection, vision, conversation, and action, we can make the journey into a promising future. An extraordinary journey beckons us. What more could we ask for? The universe is a learning system and we are students of eternity. We are only halfway home. Let’s get on with the adventure—learning to live in our living universe.

  Notes

  Preface

  1. The “Warning to Humanity” was sponsored by the Union of Concerned Scientists, 26 Church St., Cambridge, MA 02238.

  Introduction

  1. Thomas Berry, Riverdale Papers VII, “The American College in the Ecological Age,” Riverdale Center, 1980.

  2. Susan Blackmore, see: “Zen Meditation Leaves Consciousness Scientist Skeptical,” Skeptiko, March 5, 2007. See: http://www.skeptiko.com/index.php?id=12.

  3. It is important not to equate the idea of a dead universe with atheism. Most atheists focus on denying the existence of an external deity, saying this idea is beyond the reach of scientific investigation. The living universe hypothesis is not focused on an external deity but on the here and now. Whether the universe is living or non-living is a subject for scientific inquiry. This means that someone could be an atheist (not believe in an external deity) and at the same time regard the universe as profoundly alive. Conversely, someone could be a theist (believe in an external deity) and at the same time regard the universe around us as non-living. It seems more likely that someone would be a theist and view the universe as living. However, no particular religious orientation automatically fits persons who regard the universe as alive.

  Chapter 1

  1. Walt “Whitman, “Song of the Open Road,” from Leaves of Grass, 1900.

  2. Bill Broder, The Sacred Hoop, San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1979.

  3. The Planck length is the unit of length approximately 1.6 × 10-35 meters, or about 10-20 times the diameter of a proton. The Planck length is deemed “natural” because it can be defined from three fundamental physical constants: the speed of light, Planck’s constant, and the gravitational constant.

  4. Joel Primack and Nancy Abrams, The View from the Center of the Universe, New York: Riverhead Books, 2006. Also, see their website: http://viewfromthecenter.com/index.html

  5. Primack and Abrams, ibid., p. 174.

  6. About 4% of the total energy density in the universe (as inferred from gravitational effects) can be seen directly. About 23% is thought to be composed of dark matter, and the remaining 73% is thought to consist of dark energy. See, for example, David Cline, “The Search for Dark Matter,” in Scientific American, February 2003.

  7. In physical cosmology, dark energy is an exotic form of energy that permeates all of space and tends to increase the rate of expansion of the universe. See, for example, P. J. E. Peebles and Bharat Ratra (2003), “The cosmological constant and dark energy,” Reviews of Modern Physics 75: 559-606. doi:10.1103/RevModPhys.75.559.

  8. See the overview by Robert Lawrence Kuhn, “Why This Universe? Toward a Taxonomy of Possible Explanations,” in Skeptic, Volume 13, Number 2, 2007. Also, Alex Villenkin, Many Worlds in One: The Search for Other Universes, New York: Hill & Wang, 2006.

  9. See: Dean Radin, The Conscious Universe, San Francisco: Harper Edge, 1997. Also see Dean Radin, Entangled Minds: Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality, New York: Paraview Pocket Books, 2006.

  10. Dean Radin, The Conscious Universe (1997) and Entangled Minds (2006), op. cit.

  11. See: Andrew Greeley and William McCready, “Are We a Nation of Mystics,” in The New York Times Magazine, January 26, 1975. [Elsewhere Greeley states that “. . . as much as one-fifth of the population has frequent mystical experiences.” See: Andrew Greeley, Ecstasy as a Way of Knowing, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1974, p. 57.] Also reported in Brain/Mind Bulletin 12:7 (March, 1987), p. 1; and Andrew Greeley, “The Impossible: It’s Happening,” Noetic Sciences Review, Sausalito, California, Spring, 1987, pp. 7–9. A regional poll conducted in the San Francisco Bay Area gives more conservative, but still striking, results. It found that 27% said they had experienced being “very close to a powerful spiritual force that seemed to lift people out of themselves.” Reported in San Francisco Chronicle, Tuesday, April 24, 1990. A survey conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago asked a sampling of persons in the United States whether they had ever had experiences that could be interpreted as “mystical.” They discovered that among the random sample, 55% said they had experienced “a feeling of deep and profound peace,” 43% said they felt “love is at the center of everything,” 29% described an experience “of the unity of everything and my own part in it,” and 25% had the “sense that all the universe is alive.” This poll indicates that the experience of intimate union with all of creation is far more widespread than commonly acknowledged.

  12. It is important to clarify the two different meanings that are given to the phrase intelligent design. I refer often, in various ways, to the intelligent design that is expressed so clearly and beautifully throughout nature and the universe. However, an appreciation of the intelligent design of the universe should not be equated with the theological view of the same name. Specifically, many Christian fundamentalists believe that “intelligent design” offers an alternative explanation to biological evolution. In this view, an outside force created, all at the same time, the diversity in plants and animals that we see in the world today without the need for any evolution; therefore, the exquisite design of the universe is not a result of 14 billion years of unfolding in freedom but rather has been externally directed and created all at once by an external deity. The view I present regards the universe as a living system that is being continuously regenerated and that has been designed to support, in freedom, the evolutionary development of self-referencing and self-organizing systems at every scale. Instead of a deterministic universe, freedom is built into the quantum foundations of the universe. Nonetheless, because the universe is a whole system where everything interacts with and depends upon everything else, freedom has limits. Within the constraints of the universe as an integrated, interdependent system, we can act and create in freedom. Because our level of freedom grows as we become more conscious (of where we are, who we are, and the journey we are on), it means that our freedom is increasing as we awaken. Instead of being the product of an external designer, our universe appears to be an “inside job”—we are all co-creative participants in this learning and evolving system.

  13. See: Duane Elgin, Awakening Earth, New York: Morrow, 1993, pp. 304-5.

  Chapter 2

  1. Albert Einstein, Banesh Hoffman, and Helen Dukas, Albert Einstein, The Human Side, Princeton University Press, 1979.

  2. See: John Roach, “Alien Life May Be ‘Weirder’ Than Scientists Think,” National Geographic News, July 6, 2007. The article describes the report by the National Academy of Sciences on the search for extraterrestrial life. Also see: “From plasma crystals and helical structures towards inorganic living matter,” V. N. Tsytovich et al., 2007, New J Phys 9:263. http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/1367-2630/9/8/263.

  3. Lee Smolin, The Life of the Cosmos, New York: Oxford University Press, 1997, pp. 252-53.

  4. David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980, p. 175.

  5. Michael Talbot, The Holographic Universe, New York: HarperCollins, 1991.

  6. John Whee
ler, quoted in Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics, Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 1975, p. 128.

  7. Sir James Jeans, The Mysterious Universe, London: Cambridge University Press, 1931, p. 121.

  8. Ibid., p. 191.

  9. See, for example: http://freeenergynews.com/Directory/ZPE/index.html.

  10. David Bohm, op. cit., pp. 190–91.

  11. Sir James Jeans, op. cit., p. 259.

  12. For a further discussion, see my article, “The Living Cosmos: A Theory of Continuous Creation,” Re Vision, Summer 1988. Also see my book Awakening Earth, Chapter 11, “Continuous Creation of the Cosmos.” A fundamental theme throughout this book is that the universe is continually arising anew at each moment. In turn, this raises the question: At what speed is the cosmos coming into existence? The speed of emergence, or the pace of arising of the overall cosmic system, cannot be determined objectively because we cannot stand outside the cosmos in its process of becoming itself and measure it coming into existence. Because we are inside and integral to this flow of continuous regeneration, we can only make inferences regarding the pace at which this flow is occurring. For insight, we turn to a fundamental attribute of the cosmos—the constancy of the speed of light. Continuous creation cosmology hypothesizes that the constancy of the speed of light is a result of the precise consistency with which the overall fabric of the universe is dynamically woven together. In other words, the constancy of the speed of light is produced by, and is a result of, the pervasive evenness with which the overall cosmos is being regenerated as a unified system. In turn, the precise consistency of continuous creation at the cosmic scale has been interpreted as the constancy of the speed of light at the local scale.

  Continuous-creation theory suggests a straightforward reason for the physical compression, time dilation, and increase in mass predicted by relativity theory as an object approaches the speed of light. Assuming the overall cosmos is being woven together in a continuous flow whose pace is revealed by the constancy of the speed of light, then when an “object” (as a flow-through, standing wave) approaches the speed of light it will necessarily run into itself in the process of becoming itself, and this will produce a literal compression of its dynamic structure in its direction of motion. No thing (as a standing wave) can move ahead of the flow that continuously regenerates both the object and the surrounding cosmos. As an object (flow-through subsystem of the larger standing-wave cosmos) tries to move ahead of the pace at which it is becoming manifest, it will progressively run into itself becoming itself—a self-limiting process that produces the increasing physical compression, time dilation, and mass predicted by relativity theory. Assuming our cosmos is a flow-through system that is being continuously regenerated at each moment, then this should logically produce a limiting condition (boundary, threshold) as any object approaches the rate of regeneration for the overall system. No object within the dynamically arising system can move ahead of (or outside of) the system within which and from which it is continuously arising and coming into manifest existence.

  A “cosmic now” is assumed to embrace all the workings of the fifth dimension and beyond, even while each object is assumed to retain a unique time status in the lesser dimensions. Our cosmos is continuously recreated with millions of years of time-delay or relativistic lag-time built into its fourth-dimensional aspect (for example, the time it takes a signal to travel from the Andromeda galaxy to our own), while simultaneously being completely up-to-date in its fifth-dimensional aspect. “While relativity theory rightly dismissed simultaneity in four dimensions, continuous creation cosmology reintroduces simultaneity as a basic property of the fifth dimension and beyond. Simultaneity serves a vital purpose—to instantaneously distribute operating information regarding the status of sub-systems to all parts of the cosmos and thereby keep the dynamic structure of the universe in equilibrium with itself. With simultaneity in the fifth and higher dimensions, no interval is required to factor changes into the flow of manifestation of the overall cosmos. Each object has its unique four-dimensional existence and, at the same time, all objects share equally in the flow of continuous creation. Therefore, irrespective of relativistic differences (separation in time and space), all things throughout the cosmos share equally in the flow of continuous creation. The NOW of holo-dynamic, five-dimensional manifestation is the same for all entities, and all places, throughout the cosmos. Relativistic time in four dimensions is stretchy and varies for each object, while the time of the fifth dimension is absolute and unvarying for all objects. Time flows within the relativistic framework of four dimensions and dissolves into holographic simultaneity in five dimensions and beyond.

  To visualize the dynamic of continuous creation, imagine that the universe is a unified hologram that is being projected into existence at each moment with all relativistic differences fully coordinated out of a context of five dimensions or more. Also imagine that a spacecraft inside this giant hologram is being beamed into existence along with everything else as a continuous flow of manifestation. Then imagine that the spacecraft begins to move ahead at an increasing speed so that it approaches the speed with which the hologram-universe is being projected into existence. Since the craft is a projection as well, it cannot move outside of the hologram of which it is an integral part because if it tries to do so it will increasingly run into itself becoming itself, producing the seemingly impossible conditions at the extremes of relativity theory (becoming shorter in the direction of motion, increasing mass, and relativistic time slowing down). To reiterate, I assume that the constancy of the speed of light at the local scale is a result of a larger process occurring at the cosmic scale—the precise consistency of manifestation of our entire cosmos as a single, standing wave embracing both the fabric of space-time and matter-energy.

  This theory of a regenerating cosmos suggests why the mass of an object increases as it accelerates toward light speed. As the object approaches light speed, it will have to draw ever greater increments of energy from the larger ecological system as it attempts to move ahead of the ecological processes that dynamically create it. Increasing energy is required to approach light speed because, in reality, the object is trying to overcome itself in the process of becoming itself—a self-limiting process that requires drawing ever greater increments of energy from the larger cosmological system. As the object draws down ever-greater increments of energy to maintain its dynamic structure, mass must also increase, given the convertibility of matter and energy.

  With regard to slowing relativistic time, as an object approaches light speed it runs into itself in the process of its own becoming and compresses what otherwise would have been realized actuality back into the domain of unrealized potential. The process seems analogous to walking against the direction of motion on a moving conveyer belt, or walking up an escalator as it moves down. By walking against the direction of movement, dynamic stasis is approached. Similarly, as an object approaches light speed, it increasingly runs into its dynamically generated structure, thereby compressing itself relative to the rest of the freely manifesting cosmos—one measured result being a slowing of relativistic time. If the object were to reach light speed, then it would be running into itself as fast as it manifests, and this would effectively cancel out its process of becoming relative to the rest of the four-dimensional flow—thereby effectively stopping relativistic time.

  Ernst Mach attributed inertia (resistance to motion) to an object’s interaction with the totality of matter throughout the universe. However, Mach’s theory presents a major difficulty: An unknown force must act instantaneously among all material objects throughout the cosmos and yet, within the confines of a four-dimensional cosmology, it is impossible for forces to act instantaneously. The continuous creation model provides a source for instantaneous connection—it assumes each object is a dynamically generated resonance pattern that is always connected with the entire cosmos at each instant. Inertia results when an “object” presses against the “cosmos”—a giant, unified resonanc
e pattern. If an object moves outside the natural flow of the surrounding cosmos, it will push against the flow of the cosmos becoming itself, and this will be experienced as resistance to motion, or inertia. Inertia is a measure of the energy required to change the motion of an object relative to the natural momentum of the entire fabric of the dynamically manifesting cosmos. To accomplish a path change anywhere requires an instantaneous and compensating change everywhere.

  As to coordinating the interweaving of an entire universe, it is helpful to consider Planck’s constant, which may be a conversion factor for continuous creation. No matter what energy level a photon of light may have, it must be packaged (as a quanta) in such a way that its combined energy and wavelength are exactly equal to the universal constant h, or Planck’s constant. A shorter wavelength is accompanied by higher frequencies and higher energies, and vice versa. Assuming four-dimensional reality is generated at light speed, Planck’s constant could represent the conversion factor for keeping all differences in motion, mass, and energy in precise orchestration with one another—thereby preserving the unbroken fabric of four-dimensional reality. Differences in the frequency, wavelength, and energy of light (as it coalesces from the fifth-plus dimensions and into the fourth), could be used to produce the diverse material world we inhabit. Planck’s constant seems to be the conversion factor for precisely governing the flow of light as it enters into four-dimensional reality and visible manifestation.