The Living Universe

by Duane Elgin

  This cosmology may also be useful in resolving the dilemma of the arrow of time. Stated differently, a key conceptual problem with faster-than-light signaling is that it can generate time paradoxes. If a signal is able to reach into the past or future, then time order and causality are impossible to establish, and the result is immense confusion. Continuous creation cosmology resolves this dilemma by postulating that, while events can have a space-like separation in four dimensions, they have fully instantaneous connection in the fifth and higher dimensions. Because the entire four-dimensional cosmos is created whole at each instant, the flow of manifestation includes all lags and differentials in relativistic time. Due to full simultaneity, there is no time-forward or time-reversed signaling in the higher dimensions. There can be no “stand back” signaling because all times are complete at each instant.

  Because the continuous creation hypothesis offers a wide range of insights, it seems to be a valuable addition to theories regarding the nature and evolution of the universe.

  13. Guy Murchie, Music of the Spheres, Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Riverside Press, 1961, p. 451.

  14. Max Born, The Restless Universe, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1936, p. 277.

  15. Albert Einstein, “The Concept of Space,” Nature, 125, 1930, pp. 897-98.

  16. Walter Moore, Schrodinger: Life and Thought, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

  17. Bohm, op. cit., p. 11.

  18. Norbert Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings, New York: Avon Books, 1954, p. 130.

  19. Brian Swimme, The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos, New York: Orbis Books 1996, p. 100.

  20. The designation of modern humans as Homo sapiens sapiens is widespread; see, for example: Joseph Campbell, Historical Atlas of World Mythology, Vol. I: The Way of the Animal Powers, Part 1: Mythologies of the Primitive Hunters and Gatherers, New York: Harper & Row, Perennial Library, 1988, p. 22. Richard Leakey, The Making of Mankind, New York: E.P. Dutton, 1981, p. 18. Mary Maxwell, Human Evolution: A Philosophical Anthropology, New York: Columbia University Press, 1984, p. 294. John Pfeiffer, The Creative Explosion: An Inquiry into the Origins of Art and Religion, New York, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982, p. 13. Clive Ponting, A Green History of the World, New York: Penguin Books, 1993, p. 28. In the popular press, see: Newsweek magazine, Nov. 10, 1986, p. 62, and Oct. 16, 1989, p. 71.

  21. Freeman Dyson, Infinite in All Directions, New York: Harper & Row, 1988, p. 297.

  22. Max Planck, The Observer, January 25, 1931.

  23. Philip Cohen, “Can Protein Spring into Life?” in New Scientist, April 26, 1997, p. 18.

  24. Mark Buchanan, “A Billion Brains Are Better Than One,” in New Scientist November 20, 2004.

  25. Mitchel Resnick, “Changing the Centralized Mind,” Technology Review, July 1994.

  26. Greg Huang, “Tiny organisms remember the way,” in New Scientist, March 17, 2007, p. 16.

  27. Patrick Johnsson, “New Research Opens a Window on the Minds of Plants,” Christian Science Monitor, March 3, 2005. “We now know there’s an ability of self-recognition in plants, which is highly unusual and quite extraordinary that it’s actually there,” says Dr. Trewavas. “But why has no one come to grips with it? Because the prevailing view of a plant, even among plant biologists, is that it’s a simple organism that grows reproducibly in a flower pot.” Another study shows that plants appear to have the ability to communicate through the atmosphere. There is “tangible proof that plant-to-plant communication occurs on the ecosystem level,” says the author of a study that discovered plants in a forest respond to stresses by producing significant amounts of a chemical form of aspirin. This results in the release of volatile organic compounds into the air that may help to activate an ecosystem-wide immune response to the stresses. See: “Plants in forest emit aspirin chemical to deal with stress: Discovery may help agriculture,” Science Daily, September 25, 2008.

  28. Donald Griffin, and Gayle Speck, “New Evidence of Animal Consciousness,” in Animal Cognition, Vol. 7, No. 1, January 2004. Published by Springer. Also see, for example, Helen Phillips, “Known Unknowns,” New Scientist, December 16, 2006.

  29. See, for example, “Pigeons Show Superior Self-recognition Abilities to Three Year Old Humans,” in Science Daily (www.sciencedaily.com), June 14, 2008. Also: “Six ‘uniquely’human traits now found in animals,” Kate Douglas, New Scientist, May 22, 2008.

  30. Dean Radin, op. cit., p. 109. Also see: Harold Puthoff and Russell Targ, “A Perceptual Channel for Information Transfer over Kilometer Distances,” published in the proceedings of the I.E.E.E. (vol. 64, no. 3), March 1976.

  31. Radin, ibid., p. 144.

  32. Russell Targ, Phyllis Cole, and Harold Puthoff, Development of Techniques to Enhance Man/Machine Communication, Stanford Research Institute, Menlo Park, California, prepared for NASA, contract 953653 Under NAS7-100, June 1974. Also see: Harold Puthoff and Russell Targ, op. cit., “A Perceptual Channel for Information Transfer over Kilometer Distances.”

  33. For example, Targ and Puthoff, “A Perceptual Channel,” op. cit.

  34. Harold Puthoff, “CIA-Initiated Remote Viewing At Stanford Research Institute,” Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin, Texas, 1996. See: http://www.biomindsuperpowers.com/Pages/CIA-InitiatedRV.html..

  35. Puthoff and Targ, op. cit., 338^0. Also see: R. Targ and H. Puthoff, Mind-Reach: Scientists Look at Psychic Ability, Delacorte Press/Eleaonor Friede, 1977.

  36. Dean Radin, Entangled Minds, op. cit.

  37. See, for example, professor Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University, who has developed a model of the expanding universe that accounts for the birth of the universe “by quantum tunneling from nothing.” “Birth of Inflationary Universes,” in Physical Review D, 27:12 (1983), p. 2851. Other essays by Vilenkin: “Quantum Cosmology and the Initial State of the Universe,” in Physical Review D, 37 (1988), pp. 888-97, and “Approaches to Quantum Cosmology,” in Physical Review D, 50 (1994), pp. 2581-94. Also see: the work of philosopher Quentin Smith, who writes in his essay “The Uncaused Beginning of the Universe” that: “. . . the most reasonable belief is that we came from nothing, by nothing and for nothing.” William Lane Craig and Quentin Smith, Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.

  38. John Gribbin, In the Beginning: The Birth of the Living Universe, New York: Little, Brown, 1993, pp. 244-45. Also see: David Shiga, “Could black holes be portals to other universes?” New Scientist, April 27, 2007.

  39. Ibid., p. 245.

  40. Gregg Easterbrook, “What Came Before Creation?” in U.S. News and World Report, July 20, 1998, p. 48.

  41. See, for example: Alex Vilenkin, Many Worlds in One: The Search for Other Universes, New York: Hill & Wang, 2006. Ervin Laszlo, Science and the Akashic Field, Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2004. Primack and Abrams, op. cit.

  42. Primack and Abrams, op. cit., p. 190.

  Chapter 3

  1. English translation provided by Jewish Publication Society, taken from http://www.sacred-texts.com/bib/jps/.

  2. See, for example: The Complete Biblical Library, The Old Testament, Hebrew-English Dictionary, World Library Press, 1996.

  3. Psalms 19:1, New International Version, International Bible Society, 1984.

  4. For another point of view based upon the timeless nature of God’s existence, see Psalm 19:2, “Text, Translation, and Notes,” online at http://ancienthebrewpoetry.typepad.com/ancient_hebrew_poetry/2007/08/psalm-191-text-.html.

  5. Psalms 139:7—10, New International Version, op. cit., 1984.

  6. New International Version, ibid.

  7. Matthew Fox, Meditations with Meister Eckhart, Santa Fe, New Mexico: Bear and Co., 1983, p. 24.

  8. See: Ted Peters, Cosmos as Creation, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1989, pp. 82-83.

  9. It is important to differentiate between creationism and continuous creation because they differ in fundamental ways. Creationism focuses on a one-time event with no evolution, whereas
continuous creation focuses on a continuous process that includes evolution as an integral aspect of its self-transforming dynamic. Creationism is a one-time event and thus static, whereas continuous creation sees the universe as dynamically regenerating itself and creatively unfolding through time.

  10. A living-universe perspective brings new insight into the Last Supper where, in a sacred ritual of remembrance, Jesus proclaimed that bread and wine were his body and blood. This makes literal sense when the universe is viewed as a living and continuously recreated entity: all things are the literal body of God—manifestations of a divine life force. Jesus could be providing a ritual for remembering that bread and wine are, both symbolically and literally, tangible expressions of a living universe and are infused with the sacred life force that sustains the entire universe.

  11. See, for example, D. B. Macdonald, “Continuous recreation and atomic time in Muslim scholastic theology,” Isis 9 (1927): 326–44; also, Majid Fakhry, Islamic Occasionalism and Its Critique by Averroes and Aquinas, London (1958). The Islamic view of occasionalism is more inclusive than the Western philosophy by the same name that was developed by the Cartesian school (which saw mind and body as absolutely separate; therefore, bodily motion was dependent on the co-operation of God).

  12. Samuel Umen, The World of the Mystic, New York: Philosophical Library, 1988, p. 178.

  13. See, for example, Coleman Barks, The Essential Rumi, San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1995.

  14. A. H. Almaas, The Inner Journey Home, Boston: Shambhala, 2004.

  15. Huston Smith, The Religions of Mankind, New York: Harper and Row, 1958, p. 73.

  16. Sri Nisargadatta Majaraj, I Am That, Part I (trans. Maurice Frydman), Bombay, India: Chetana, 1973, p. 289.

  17. Heinrich Zimmer, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization, Joseph Campbell (ed.), Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, Bollingen Series, 1972, p. 152.

  18. Zimmer, ibid., p. 131.

  19. Satprem, Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, Pondicherry, India, 1970.

  20. Swami Prabhavanada and Frederick Manchester, The Upanishads: Breath of the Eternal, New York: New American Library, 2002.

  21. Ibid., p. 131.

  22. Huston Smith, The Religions of Man, New York: Harper and Row, 1958.

  23. The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality, New York: Morgan Road Books, 2005, p. 81.

  24. Govinda, Creative Meditation and Multi-dimensional Consciousness, Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1976, p. 207.

  25. Govinda, ibid., p. 9.

  26. Namkhai Norbu, The Crystal and the Way of Light: Sutra, Tantra, and Dzogchen (compiled and edited by John Shane), New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986, p. 64.

  27. D. T. Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970, p. 364.

  28. Ibid., p. 257.

  29. Alan Watts, The Middle Way: Journal of the Buddhist Society, February 1973, London, p. 156.

  30. Robert Linssen, Living Zen, New York: Grove Press, 1958.

  31. Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching (trans. Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English), New York: Vintage Books, 1972.

  32. Mary Evelyn Tucker referenced in Samuel Snyder, “Chinese Traditions and Ecology,” Worldviews, 2006.

  33. Luther Standing Bear, quoted in Joseph Epes Brown, “Modes of Contemplation Through Actions: North American Indians,” Main Currents in Modern Thought, New York: Center for Integrative Studies, November December 1973, p. 194.

  34. Malcolm Margolin, The Ohlone Way: Indian Life in the San Francisco-Monterey Bay Area, Berkeley: Heyday Books, 1978.

  35. Ibid., pp. 142-43.

  36. David Maybury-Lewis, Millennium: Tribal Wisdom and the Modern World, New York: Viking, 1992, pp. 197-202.

  37. David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous, New York: Vintage Books, 1996, p. 169.

  38. Sam Keen, Your Mythic Journey, New York: Tarcher/Putnam Books, 1989, p. 90.

  39. Richard Nelson, Make Prayers to the Raven, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983, p. 14.

  40. Plotinus, quoted in: John Gregory, The Neo-Platonists, Kyle Cathie, 1991, selected passages from the Enneads, 4.4.32.

  41. Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism, New York: Meridian Books, 1955, p. 28.

  42. Heraclitus, quoted in Timothy Ferris, Galaxies, New York: Stewart, Tabori and Chang, 1982, p. 87.

  43. Alexander, “Space, Time and Deity,” quoted in Underhill, op. cit., p. 29.

  44. Bergson, ibid., p. 191.

  Chapter 4

  1. Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth, San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1988, p. 132.

  2. Yervant Terzian and Elizabeth Bilson, eds., Carl Sagan’s Universe, Cambridge University Press, 1997, p. 148. Also see the highly regarded physicist, Alex Vilenkin, who writes: “At the heart of the new worldview is the picture of an eternally inflating universe. It consists of isolated “island universes,” where inflation has ended. . .” op. cit., p. 203. Also see, for example, Marcus Chown, “Into the Void,” New Scientist, November 24, 2007, who explores whether a giant void in the universe could be the imprint of another universe.

  3. Wheeler, quoted in Renee Weber, “The Good, the True, the Beautiful,” in Main Currents, p. 139.

  4. Ibid., p. 140.

  5. Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth, with Bill Moyers, New York: Double-day, 1988, p. 217.

  6. Stephen Mitchell (trans.), Tao Te Ching: A New English Version, Harper & Row, 1988, Chapter 25.

  7. The quote by Shao is taken from: Garma Chang, The Buddhist Teaching of Totality: The Philosophy of Hwa Yen Buddhism, University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1971, p. 111.

  8. Rumi, quoted in Andrew Harvey, The Way of Passion: A Celebration of Rumi, Berkeley: Frog, Ltd., 1994, p. 189.

  9. Yung-chia Hsuan-chueh was a scholar and a monk who lived in the years 665 to 713 and was one of the most gifted teachers of the Ch’an (Zen) school during the T’ang Dynasty of China.

  10. Lankavatara Sutra, D. T. Suzuki, trans., Boulder: Prajnñ Press, 1978, p. 8.

  11. Underhill, Mysticism, op. cit., p. 101.

  Chapter 5

  1. Brian Swimme, op. cit., p. 112.

  2. Russell Targ was the co-founder of the psychic research program at SRI in the early 1970s and would later write, “We are not a body, but rather limitless, nonlocal awareness animating or residing as a body.” [emphasis in original] See: Targ, Limitless Mind: A Guide to Remote Viewing and Transformation of Consciousness, Novato: CA: New World Library, 2004, p. xii.

  3. Bernard Haisch, The God Theory, op. cit.

  4. David Bohm, op. cit., p. 45.

  5. James Robinson, ed., Nag Hammadi Library, 1st edition, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1977, p. 123. Elsewhere in the Gnostic sources, Jesus is quoted by the disciple James as saying: “Search ever and cease not till ye find the mysteries of the Light, which will lead you into the Light-kingdom.”

  6. See, for example, the article: “The Quakers: Children of the Light,” at the Quaker site: http://www.fum.org/about/friends.htm Also see a discussion of inward light at: http://www.quakers.org/inwardlight.php

  7. Robert Cummings Neville (ed.), Ultimate Realities, New York: SUNY, 2001, p. 52.

  8. See, for example: Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Alchemy of Light, Inverness, CA: Golden Sufi Center, 2007.

  9. Quoted in Andrew Harvey, The Way of Passion, op. cit., p. 138.

  10. Most Buddhists do not deny the existence of a soul as a life stream of luminous consciousness; instead, they deny the soul is an unchanging, autonomous entity. In turn, meditation is seen as a vehicle for discovering ourselves as an ever-flowing life stream and relaxing directly into the flow of self-luminous knowing.

  11. Harvey, ibid., p. 160.

  12. Robert Bly (trans.), The Kabir Book, Boston: Beacon Press, 1977, p. 21.

  13. “Love” is described in the Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd edition, Wood-bridge, CT: Macmillan Reference, December 2004.

  14. Quoted i
n Matthew Fox, Creation Spirituality, op. cit., p. 28.

  15. Ibn al-Arabi, quoted in Robert Ellwood, Jr., Mysticism and Religion, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1980, p. 92.

  16. Jesus quoted in The Gospel of Thomas, Nag Hammadi Library, James Robertson, general editor, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1977, p. 124.

  17. An Arabic inscription on a city gate of Fatepuhr-Sikri in India.

  18. See, for example, Tsele Natsok Rangdrol, The Mirror of Mindfulness: The Cycle of the Four Bardos, E. Kunsang (trans.), Boston: Shambhala Press, 1989.

  19. Rangdrol, Ibid., pp. 8-10.

  20. HH the XIV Dalai Lama, The Heart of Compassion: A Practical Approach to a Meaningful Life, Wisconsin: Lotus Press, 2002.

  21. Robert Bly (trans.), op. cit., p. 24.

  Chapter 6

  1. Scientists are now expanding their description of “life” in recognition there may be life forms thriving on another planet but living in a sea of liquid methane instead of water or living on hydrochloric acid instead of energy from the sun. See, for example, Douglas Fox, “Life in the Deep Freeze,” New Scientist, August 12, 2006, p. 35. Bacteria have been found buried kilometers deep in the ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland, with temperatures as low as—40 degrees centigrade, living for hundreds of thousands of years in a film of water at little as three molecules thick.

  2. There are complex, self-organizing processes going on even at the scale of entire galaxies. Our Milky Way galaxy, with its several hundred billion stars, had been assumed to be no more than a simple, whirling disk of matter. Now, our galaxy is being described by scientists as a “dynamic, living object” that is “breathing—pushing out gas and then pulling it back in, as if exhaling and inhaling.” (See: Bart P. Wakker and Philipp Richte, “Our Growing, Breathing Galaxy,” Scientific American, January 2004.) Our enormous galaxy is a complex ecological system that is nurturing star systems that are in turn producing planets that grow our forms of life. Galaxies are cosmic gardens comprised of billions of stars in a complex, ongoing partnership with streaming gases and energy, all necessary to create the conditions for growing a rich diversity of life within a galaxy.