The Big Bang theory of cosmological creation is now overwhelmingly fashionable in the world of astrophysics, though many feel that it is based on flawed reasoning, false premises, innate contradictions and glaring paradoxes.  Yet it lingers on.... Many careers and much grant money are dependent on the perpetuation of the concept and its spin-off subsidiary theories of “super-strings”, “quantum gravity”, “inflation”, “dark matter” and so on.

The Cosmic Commode theory is an alternative cosmogony.  Primarily, it rejects two false premises of the Big Bang model: (1) The cosmological red-shift of the light from all distant objects in space is due to an expansion of the universe, and (2) Gravity is a “force”, one of the Four Forces of Nature, thought by some to be propagated quantum-fashion by a particle, a proposed “graviton”, or a “superstring”.

Cosmic Commode cosmology views gravity as it is defined by Machian-Einsteinian relativity: a ubiquitous curvature of space-time in the presence of matter and/or energy.  Gravity itself is not a force.... It is geometry.... and the universe ain’t expanding, it’s just curved a funny way.

THE COSMIC COMMODE

A PROPOSED RESOLUTION OF GENERAL RELATIVITY THEORY and AN ALTERNATIVE TO THE BIG BANG MODEL OF COSMOLOGICAL CREATION

by Phil Mayhew  

Some responses to The Cosmic Commode...

“I agree completely with your intuition that the universe is not expanding.... You are already far ahead of 99% of conventional scientists.... But you are trying to link the science with human emotion and spirit.  A very tough and admirable project.  Best wishes.”

— Halton Arp
Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics
Garching, Germany
 
 

“You're so right in believing that a question doesn't answer itself.  You have to state it and keep stating it, as you do.  Best wishes.”

— John Archibald Wheeler
Dept. of Astrophysics
Princeton University
 

“I loved it!.... I found it very stimulating and illuminating.... You have made me want to learn more.”
— Michael Washburn
Dept. of Philosophy
Indiana University
Author of The Ego and the Dynamic Ground
 

“I thoroughly enjoyed your Cosmic Commode.  We kindred souls form a small group who think differently than the rest.  I hope we are the vanguard.”
— Leonard Schlain, M.D.
Author of Art and Physics
 

“So well written.”
— Frederick Franck
Internationally recognized artist
and author of a score of books
on Buddhism and the arts.    

This journey is brought to you by the author and the Beersheba Foundation, dedicated to the dual principle that (1) true adventure is found only off the beaten path, and (2) that the Creative Process can (and does) shape the world. Bon voyage....

All Illustrations by the author.
Copyright © 1992 by Phil Mayhew.  All rights reserved.

For further information:
Email: Otherside@blomand.net

This treatise is devoted to Ernst Mach, who first perceived gravity as universal geometry, and to Albert Einstein, who gave it the mathematical framework we know as General Relativity.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
  Namasté (loosely translated from Sanskrit):
“The essence of Eternal Spirit within me says ‘Howdy’
to the essence of Eternal Spirit within you.” 
Here goes....  

Besotted with the fear of death, perplexed as to our origin and ultimate fate, we stumble forward willy-nilly through space and time in the Great Process we call the universe.  Awed and humbled by our apparent aloneness and the enormity of our surroundings, we cower behind these shells of memory and personality we call our egos, oft taking solace in the warm, fuzzy glow offered by surrender to opulent materialism, fundamentalist belief-systems, fashionable cults and therapies or the cold certainty and hard-edged materialism of an all too often fundamentalist Science.

Who are we and where are we going?

I stand with my wife, Terri, on the magnificent fossil beds at the Falls of the Ohio River Park near Louisville, Kentucky, marveling at the interlocking fossils that totally compose the flat rock shoals beneath our feet.... a legacy handed down for perhaps 400 million years.

As we gaze at this flat page of the Great Book of the Earth, we experience a view of Life-history: We are in a metaphorical football stadium of vast proportions, gazing across at a “human wave” moving around the curve of the stadium, as spectators (1) stand up, (2) raise their arms, palms forward, (3) lower their arms and (4) sit down, all in a synchronized order that laterally propagates in wave-form.  The fossils beneath our feet are simply the “earthen photographs” of organisms who’ve already “sat down” as the Wave of Life propagates forward in time.  It is now our turn to be “standing up”.

One could expand the “wave” metaphor to represent the entire universe moving forward in time.  This is impossible for us to experience more than partially, for to look outward into the universe is to see only backward in time (around the stadium).  We can never see into the present state of distant space because of the vast time it takes for the light of these events to reach us.  But the wave of the Eternal Present embraces the entire universe simultaneously, moving around the stadium of time.  Only our limited means of perception (be-shackled by the speed of light) prevent us from experiencing the whole of it.

Our stadium-metaphor has thus far envisioned time as an oval loop rather like Fig. 1.... Let’s toy with the loop by cutting it across in one spot, giving one end a half-twist and gluing the two ends back together.  This, of course, gives us a “mobius strip”, a never-ending, involuted, spiral cycle (Fig. 2)....

With a pencil, we can make a point anywhere on the strip.  We can then extend the point into a line that moves around the strip in one direction only.  If we continue the line far enough, we wind up where we started: at the original starting point, the end-beginning... without having lifted the pencil! The strip logically must have two sides, but where does one side end and the other begin? Where is the transition? Or does it have two sides after all? Or an end or beginning? Remember, we never lifted the pencil to make the switch from one side to the other.

Flipping the strip over, we can see that there are two lines on opposite sides of it, paralleling one another in an involuted spiral but never meeting.... And yet, aren't they the same line? Where does the line really begin or end now, and what is the sound of one hand clapping?

Imagine that our galaxy is but one point among an infinite number of points on the mobius strip, all describing their “world-lines” in the same direction along its length.  Remember that these world-lines are only temporal paths, abstractions.... Galaxies are really evolving events of localized, spinning matter-energy.  The width of the strip metaphorically represents the three-dimensional space of the universe, and the uniform movement of the points along the length of the strip represents the forward-only movement of time.  The directional “twist” of the strip represents the universally cumulative effect of gravity: the distortion of space-time in the ubiquitous presence of matter and/or energy.

The mobius strip, then, becomes a metaphor for the eternally on-going process that is our physical universe.... and its other side (a concept with which we will deal shortly).

We are offering a cosmology which postulates that space, time and gravity form an interdimensional matrix that is best metaphored by the mobius strip, a universe that physically and temporally involutes on itself to form a never-ending, spiral cycle.  In this view of the cosmos, there is no Big Bang, no End and no Beginning.... only an eternal, double-cycled evolution.

Acceptance of this augmented view of universal, relativistic geometry requires a reinterpretation and reappraisal of the so-called “cosmological red-shift” of all electromagnetic energy reaching us from intergalactic space.  The Big Bang model maintains that the increasing red-shift of the light reaching us from increasingly distant galaxies is due to recessional velocity caused by the primordial explosion of an infinitely small “mass-point”, within which all this multi-galactic matter-energy originally was contained.  According to this model, things are still moving apart.  (Or, as some cosmologists like to say, “the space between things is expanding”.)

Our model, reflecting our penchant for grandiose metaphor, can be called the “Cosmic Commode” model.  It interprets the cosmological red-shift another way.... Cosmic Commode cosmology envisions a universal “granular” or “quantum”, texture, each quantum (or granule) being a galaxy: an involuting locus of matter-energy that eternally pursues a two-phased oscillation from quasar to black hole, from matter to antimatter, and back again, propelled by its own gravitational curvature along a temporal and relativistic path that is best illustrated metaphorically by the mobius strip.... A true dragon swallowing its tail.... An infinite system of quantum, cyclical self-absorption and rebirth, rather than expansion.

One of the two main false premises of twentieth century cosmology is the persistent concept of gravity as a magnetic-like “force” (one of the Four Forces of Nature, along with the “strong” nuclear force, the “weak” nuclear force and electromagnetism), acting at a distance and thought by some to be propagated by a quantum, a proposed “graviton”, or a “superstring.”  Gravity is not a force, or a “thing” at all, any more than the letters N, S, E and W are “places” on a map of the Earth.  Gravity is a higher curvature of space and time, a directional orientation, a dimension of movement or travel for all matter-energy.... The fifth dimension, if you will, after the three dimensions of space and the fourth, of time. The “force” of gravity is actually the inertial force of matter/energy moving along this gravitational curvature, rather than any magnetic-like form of attraction.

The term “gravitational curvature” begs this question: How does curvature manifest an “attractive” force? The quick answer: It doesn’t... It just seems to. The best illustration of this is from the late Guy Murchie’s wonderful science pandect, “Music of the Spheres”: Two ships are in the equatorial Atlantic, occupying adjacent longitudinal lines, moving northward. Their courses at first appear to be parallel, but as they progress toward the North Pole, their longitudinal orientations gradually converge. To the observers on board each ship, the two vessels seem to be drawn together by means of some “force of attraction” between them. This seems to make perfect sense if one is unaware of the curvature of the Earth’s surface. What seems to be an attractive force is really just convergent relative motion along an un-apparent curvature... the essence of General Relativity.

General Relativity leaves open the possibility of various resolutions, depending on one’s interpretation. Fundamental to an understanding of its true resolution, however, is the requirement that the mind recognize the difference between a “force” and a “dimension”. A “force” is propagated by a microcosmic quantum... A “dimension” is an expression of macrocosmic geometry. The distinction may seem subtle and counter-intuitive, but is quite profound. In “quantum gravity” or “superstring” theory, quantum bundles of energy (particles or strings) mediate all forces of nature, including gravity, just as in Quantum Electrodynamics. By this interpretation, gravity itself is made up of these quantum “gravitons” or “superstrings”. But according to General Relativity, gravity essentially is space-time. It is paradoxical to believe that quantum particles or strings can compose space-time curvature, yet at the same time operate within this curvature. Gravity is an expression of geometry, the outermost layer of the five-dimensional universal “onion”. A force is mediated by a quantum bundle of electromagnetic energy moving within the larger geometric context of this dimensional curvature. Confusing the two is rather like trying to establish the weight of an inch.

This persistent confusion is at the root of the modern fixation on reconciling two unreconcilable fundamentals, Quantum Electrodynamics and General Relativity, into what is often called the Grand Unified Theory of Everything.  The basic premise of this shotgun wedding, simply stated, goes something like this: When an object collapses into a black hole, its volume decreases rapidly into the realm of the microcosm, whereupon it, like all things in the world of particles, becomes subject to the laws of quantum mechanics.  The premise, however, is false and is rooted in the same above-mentioned confusion: A black hole singularity is the ultimate dimensional resolution of gravitational curvature.  It is the ultimate “pathway”  for all matter/energy, rather than the collapsing matter/energy itself, and should best be thought of as a “tunnel” .  At this point in the Eternal Process, Quantum Electrodynamics becomes totally subservient to General Relativity.  The waist of an hourglass is not the sand passing through it.

Dimensionality is a hierarchically nestled total, like the Chinese box puzzle with its box within a box within a box.... The first dimension allows only linearity, a point stretching into a line.  The second dimension allows the plane, creating a higher reality that contains, but is greater than, the line.  The third dimension allows the solid, a volume that contains, but is greater than, the line and the plane.  The fourth dimension of time likewise contains, but is greater than, length, width and depth: As one walks across a room, one progresses through time as well, as a higher dimension of movement.  All of these are hierarchically contained within the fifth and greatest, all-inclusive dimension of gravitational curvature.

The other main false premise of twenty-first century cosmology is the bedrock assumption that the cosmological red-shift is due to recessional velocity, rather than the constant, cumulative curvature of space-time-gravity over vast distance, which “bends” the wavelength of all light from distant objects toward the red end of the spectrum.

Acceptance of these two related false premises renders all Big Bang cosmology (no matter how brilliantly articulated) down to the level of “How many angels can dance on the point of a pin?”  This acceptance is the underpinning of the standard Big Bang model, and the removal of these premises casts grave doubt on the veracity of the model itself.

The popular conception of gravity likens it to a rope, one end of which is fastened, say, to the Earth and the other, to the Sun.  This so-called “binding force” supposedly prevents the Earth from hurtling outward into the cosmos due to the energy of its inertial force and velocity around the Sun.  The two forces being equalized, the Earth would maintain a stable orbit indefinitely.

But there is a more subtle conceptual approach: If gravity is the curvature of space-time due to the presence of matter-energy, then the Sun can be said to be at the bottom of a curved “depression” in space-time, or a “gravity-well”, with the Earth spinning around the “slope” at a distance determined by its own inertial force, or energy-of-motion. (Fig. 3)

Such is the “binding force” of gravity.... actually just a higher curvature of the space between the Earth and Sun, or any two objects in space.  There is no “rope.”  As we gaze across space-time at any distant object, our vision does not follow a straight line, but rather this constant, gradual curvature.  There are no absolutely straight lines in the universe, even if we are gazing through an empty vacuum, a volume of space containing no massive bodies.  Einstein’s elegant equation for energy serendipitously tells us this: E=MC², or the energy contained by a given mass is equivalent to the amount of the mass multiplied by the speed of light squared.  Matter and energy ultimately are the same phenomenon.... They merely change form, back and forth, eternally.  They both also warp the directional matrix of space-time, revealing the dimension of gravitational curvature.  Since all space-time is pervaded by matter and/or energy, this warpage is a (sometimes tiny, but) constant, ever-present attribute of the geometry of the cosmos.  Matter-energy and gravity are therefore inseparable: Light not only follows the curvature of space-time.... Light causes the very curvature that it follows.  It is a “chicken or egg” situation.  Everything boils down to two yin-yang factors: MOTION (light) and DIRECTION (gravity), the warp and weft of creation.

This same ubiquitous curvature (called “Mach’s Principle”, after the late physicist, Ernst Mach) that so pervades the universal empyrean also causes the red-shift of all electromagnetic energy reaching us from far away from our point in space-time.... the more red-shifted, the farther the light has traveled and the more gravitational curvature the light has passed through, climbing “uphill” to get to us.  This red-shift is proportionate to the object’s distance from us, causing it to coincide (and be confused) with Hubble’s Law of the Doppler red-shift (which does indeed exist for all objects rapidly receding from us).  The distant universe is “down” to us, because in whatever direction we look across the cosmos, we see mass, energy and, hence, gravity.  In effect, light climbs “up-hill” against this gravity as it moves across the cosmos (from any direction) and gradually loses energy in the process, shifting toward the red end of the spectrum, a natural consequence of universal curvature over a vast distance that gives the illusion of an expanding cosmos..

The Doppler (or recessional) red-shift of light can best be illustrated by the classical “train” analogy: We are at a railroad crossing, and a train is approaching us, whistle blowing.  At this point the whistle is high-pitched, since the velocity of the train moving in our direction is added to the velocity of the sound of the whistle (about 1100 ft/sec).

As the train passes and moves away from us, the whistle drops in pitch: The recessional velocity of the train is now subtracted from the velocity of the whistle’s sound, giving the lower pitch.

Light reaching us from all objects in space expresses a similar phenomenon: Light from objects moving toward us is blue-shifted as the motion of the object adds energy to the light (though not velocity, which, for light, is constant).  Oppositely, light reaching us from an object that is receding from us is shifted in frequency toward the red end of the color spectrum as the recessional velocity of the object robs energy from the light.  Such is the cause of the cosmological red-shift as defined by the Big Bang model.
 
But recession is not the only way light can be red-shifted in frequency.  Light from a super-massive body is red-shifted by the enormous gravity of that body, which “pulls” at the very light that it emits.  For instance, a neutron star, or “pulsar”, with a surface temperature of perhaps billions of degrees Kelvin, may shine with a wan, reddish glow, the light and heat red-shifted downward by the massive gravitational warpage.  (Fig. 4).

Gravitational curvature affects the wavelength of all electromagnetic radiation.  The light reaching us from any object far enough away from us in space-time (“down”) has climbed out of an increasing overall universal gravity-well to get to us (Mach’s Principle, again).... This exertion imposes a progressive “drag” on the light’s motion-energy, “stretching” its wavelength toward the red end of the spectrum, a natural consequence of universal curvature over a vast distance that gives the illusion of an expanding cosmos.

If, indeed, our mobius-strip metaphor depicts a cyclical evolution of the universe, how does this define the nature and development of each individual galaxy, each moving “point-line” on the strip?  Consider this quote from Sir James Jeans (1877-1946), late British mathematician and astrophysicist, who, in an amazingly prescient flash in 1929, wrote: “The centers of the nebulae (galaxies) are of the nature of ‘singular points’, at which matter is poured into our universe from some other, and entirely extraneous, spatial dimension, so that, to a denizen of our universe, they appear as points at which matter is being continually created.”  This brilliant intuition has been rather thoroughly ignored by contemporary cosmology.  Indeed, shortly thereafter, Edwin Hubble made his momentous discovery of the cosmological red-shift; universal expansion was falsely deduced; and Big Bang cosmology became the fashionable model of the time.

Keeping in mind the gist of Jeans’s conjecture, let’s pick a point on the mobius-strip that can represent our own galaxy.  When, exactly, is our arbitrary starting-point in time?  Let’s call it.... Oh, what the hell, for want of a better word, let’s call it.... the “Beginning”.

In the Beginning, there was not just one Big Bang, but countless smaller ones we now call “quasars”.... Actually localized points of entrance into the universe of all the electromagnetic energy that will eventually coalesce as the matter of each galaxy.  This energy, mostly in the form of gamma radiation, comes from a source that will be discussed shortly, but as it pours into the universe (each galaxy in its own time) it is bound by (1) the continually increasing gravity-curvature that accompanies all matter-energy, and (2) the laws of electromagnetism that “shape” every energy-process in the cosmos.  Some of this radiation escapes across the universe to provide us with a record of that epoch, the light now reaching us from these regions and events having traveled for billions of years, and telling us also of the same process that occurred in our own galaxy at its violent “beginning” (Fig. 5).  The residue of these myriad primal explosions has left us the background microwave “whisper” mistakenly attributed to a Big Bang cosmogenesis.

The super-saturation of gamma radiation in the heart of each quasar results in the formation (from this colliding, spinning energy) of positive and negative charge-masses of ordained (by the laws of parity and symmetry) distribution, mass and spin: the protons and electrons that join one another to form hydrogen atoms.  (Under  “normal” conditions within our universe, such as those which exist in particle accelerators on Earth, such collisions always produce paired matter/antimatter particles. Not so within the black hole/quasar interuniversal mechanism: In goes matter, out comes antimatter... or vice versa.) These, driven by the point-counterpoint phenomenae of gravity and electromagnetic attraction, seek one another in vast hydrogen clouds that ultimately coalesce into those nodes of greatest density we call stars.  Hydrogen fusion processes ignite as these nodes reach a density and pressure that produces the magic temperature of twenty million degrees Kelvin, and the countless stars of each galaxy are off and running....

Many of these stars possess enough mass to carry them through the six levels of fusion above that of hydrogen, producing (step by step) in their innards the elements of the periodic table, and releasing them (via novae and supernovae) into the galaxy to form second- and third-generation stars.  These stars, in turn, possess the essential elements (in their primordial dust-clouds) for the formation of planets with carbon-based Life, inevitably, and the Wave propagates onward....

All of the ninety or so elements in the universe are merely the by-products of the nuclear fusion process of matter-formation and energy-release, the “basic metabolism” of the cosmos.... “star-shit”, so to speak.

The quasars eventually evolve from roundish, elliptical star- and dust-clouds into condensing, spinning, flattening spirals with enormous electromagnetic fields, (Seyfert-class galaxies), and the Life inside them evolves as well.... a beautiful, disorderly “fungus” on the star-shit.... moving, wave-form, around the mobius strip of time in keeping with its own unique nature and destiny: The Cosmos expressing awareness of Itself.

Over billions of years the galactic center becomes ever more saturated with matter-energy from the fading quasar, and the stars forming there become densely packed.  Many stars evolve to the neutron-star stage (the process of fusion having run its full course), further gathering all matter in their paths and ultimately coalescing inward toward the ever-denser core region, to merge at last with the relentless, ravenous black hole that gradually forms at each galactic center.... following the quasar phase.  Gravity is always the winner at last, ultimately confining and swallowing the entire galactic mass.
 
From quasar to black hole.... Our own galaxy is now roughly midway between these two extremes. As our  (or any other) galaxy ultimately evolves from exploding quasar to self-consumptive black hole, it will have traveled (through time) one half-circuit of the mobius strip (perhaps hundreds of billions of years), reaching a point that is precisely opposite the initial beginning point (or quasar) on the opposite “side” of the strip.  This is a “cosmic instant”. It now begins the second half of its eternal circuit (Fig. 6).

Bit by bit, as all galactic matter-energy spirals down the central-galactic black-hole-singularity “toilet bowl”, it effectively reaches infinite density, infinite mass, infinite gravitational curvature (or involuted direction) and therefore infinite time-passage as well.... in this universe.  Relativity stops here.
 
End of Time.

As the matter-energy is crushed to impossible density in the black hole, it emerges on the other side of the “universal coin” at the beginning of time.... and the beginning of the second half of our mobius-strip circuit, around the “other side”, the ultimate destination of the “direction” of gravity.  (Did you ever wonder where the commode led to when you were a kid?  Wow.... is this all just an expression of “anal retention”?)

In a central-galactic, black hole-singularity, space-time itself turns “inside-out”, causing all accompanying matter-energy to follow suit by ultimately becoming its own antimatter, following the total conversion of the galactic mass into gamma-photons as the mirror-reversal process takes place: An exploding quasar of pure electromagnetic energy once again.... From the End of Time to a new Beginning, and representing the only form of gateway between them.... A dark “tunnel” with a strange, illogical “twist” on the inside.  Light is its own anti-particle, and can exist on either side of the mobius-strip, in both the matter and antimatter halves of the cosmos.
 
This first circuit is one-half of the cyclical Process of Creation that our universe goes through in one “kalpa” (a Hindu word used here to denote the full double-circuit).... From quasars to evolving galaxies to central galactic black holes, through the “looking glass” (the twisted time-tunnels of their singularities) bursting into the antimatter universe that cyclically “follows simultaneously” each matter-universe phase, repeating the same evolutionary process as antimatter, anti-quasar, anti-galaxy and anti-black hole.... back and forth eternally, each galaxy an oscillating component of an oscillating cosmos.

To travel through three-dimensional space, one must travel through time as well (a phenomenon called “interpenetration”).  One must also have velocity.  When an object increases in velocity, it increases in relative mass as well.  (Which is why a high-velocity rifle bullet with a rest-mass of only a few ounces can shatter a concrete block.)  When we accelerate in a car, our increased mass is expressed in the opposite direction (inertia) as our increasing weight pressing against the seat with a sensation that is indistinguishable from gravity.

Relative mass and inertia are correlative terms: When an object increases in velocity (relative to its environment), its inertial force increases as well. It then occupies a different inertial frame of reference than its previous environment. Its mass also increases relative to that which existed in its previous inertial frame. Obviously, the word “relative” is key here, but this is not just simple semantics: From the relative point of view of the above-mentioned concrete block (which still exists in the original inertial frame), the inertia of the bullet has the same effect as a massive weight suddenly resting on the block, focused on an area no more than a half-inch across... The block shatters in either case.

So, inertia is directly proportionate to velocity, as is gravity, and is also manifested in the opposite direction.  (For instance, Einstein’s “other” Principle of Equivalence concerning inertia and gravity, which states that for an object to escape from the surface of another object [such as the Earth], its “escape velocity” must exceed its “gravitational velocity” inward, imposed by the mass of the larger object.)  From this we can see that inertia and gravity are ultimately the same phenomenon, and indeed, they are treated the same way in physics. Nothing is ever truly “still” in the universe.  Everything is constantly moving in the dimension of gravity.

Admittedly, this is difficult to envision (like trying to pick up a ball of mercury with the fingertips), but General Relativity properly regards gravity as an inertial frame of reference in a direction (or dimension) not obvious to us.

When an object increases in velocity, mass and inertia, space-time is gravitationally warped in its vicinity.

So.... Here we have a curious “bootstrap” situation that can be summed up in this manner: Space, time and gravity are all dimensions of “movement”, each automatically increasing in rate or degree proportionately with the others in a five-dimensional continuum.  If we are astronauts in a spacecraft accelerating toward the speed of light, our relative mass increases accordingly, and we move forward in time relative to the rest of the universe.... the “time-dilation” of Special Relativity Theory.

According to Special Relativity, any moving object possessing a velocity (relative to our frame of reference) that is an appreciable fraction of the speed of light undergoes this time-dilation.  This results in the old “clock paradox”, wherein two clocks, identical in design, are set precisely together.  One stays on Earth, and the other goes on board the spacecraft for a journey that involves enormous interstellar distance and relativistic velocity.  Upon returning to Earth, it is found that the clock on board the spacecraft has progressed at a slower rate.... to a degree that is directly proportional to the maximum velocity reached by the spacecraft on its voyage.  Likewise, the astronauts have aged less than their colleagues on Earth.

The reason for this is that the increased velocity of the craft toward light-speed gave it increased inertia (mass times velocity), hence, more relative mass, hence, more gravity (or space-time warpage).  According to General Relativity, gravity slows down the passage of time within its immediate vicinity.... the more intense the gravitational warpage, the slower the subjective time-rate.  Time is an irreversible companion of mass, inertia, velocity or gravity.

There is a big argument at the spaceport upon the return of the astronauts (who have aged six or so months to their colleagues’ twenty years) concerning who is correct.  The observers on Earth insist that time slowed down on board the spacecraft during its journey.... The astronauts argue just as insistently that from their relative point of view, nothing at all changed during the trip.  In fact, they might further insist (with equally convincing proof available to them) that the rest of the universe sped up!  But majority rules, and physics has decided that time, for the astronauts, does indeed slow down.  (One must ponder the confusion in the pay-scale: If the astronauts were wise, they would take twenty years’ pay and not argue too loudly about “time dilation”.)

We would offer a slight compromise in conceptualization.... to the effect that the inertial field of gravity (or space-time curvature) generated by the spacecraft’s velocity allowed time to “pass by” around it but not inside, having the paradoxical effect of slowing down the aging process within the craft from the relative point of view of observers on Earth, but in actuality serving to propel the craft into the future in a “differential cocoon” of gravity.... So, after a six-month voyage on-board ship, they return to find that they have actually traveled ahead twenty years by sliding forward on a faster, separate, inertial-gravitational “treadmill”.

The effect of gravity, then, can be viewed as a means of traveling ahead in time for a certain area within its immediate sphere of influence (its “event horizon”).  Velocity corresponds to mass corresponds to gravity corresponds to relative time-passage.... all or none, the field being a unified one.  All of these qualities interpenetrate, reducing down to different aspects of a total process if examined closely enough. To illustrate (Fig. 7)....

Let’s say that the five slots represent these factors: (1) three-dimensional space, (2) velocity, (3) relative time passage, (4) mass and (5) gravity.... all bound together inextricably in the Unified Field “gear-system”.

To travel through three-dimensional space, one must travel through time as well.  One must also have velocity.  Increasing an object’s velocity toward light-speed also increases the object’s relative mass and, hence, its inertia (or gravity).  This, of course, moves the object “ahead” in time relative to the rest of the universe.  Again, it’s all a higher-level “bootstrap” situation.  You can’t increase any of these factors without increasing the rest proportionately, since they are all merely different aspects of the same total process if seen from a large enough perspective.
 
We can identify the highest velocity in our universe as that of light: just short of 300,000 km/sec.  We may as well regard this as infinite, for all practical purposes, since it is the ultimate limit on universal velocity.  We can identify the largest possible singular mass that can exist in our universe as a galaxy.  We can consider this infinite also, since the accumulation of this much matter-energy in the galactic core-region ultimately leads to a catastrophic gravitational collapse into a black hole, where space-time is infinitely curved.
 
These are but upper limits imposed on all things in our physical universe.  The greater the velocity or mass of any object, the greater its accompanying distortion, or strain, on the very fabric of space-time.... which, as it turns out, has a “surface-tension” just like the surface of any liquid.  The water-bugs and other critters that scamper back and forth across the surface of a pond can do so because their mass is insufficient to break the surface-tension of the water.  If their mass increased (or their volume decreased), they would eventually break the surface-tension and sink to the bottom like stones.  The upper limit would have been reached.  And, as we have seen, all things (even the surface-tension of space-time) have their upper limits....

It is important to understand that when these upper limits have been reached, the end of time is reached as well.  The galaxy has “dropped out” of this universe, pushed by its own increasing central-galactic mass (gravity increases with density by the inverse-square law) to the end of time on one side of the cycle.... which is the same as the beginning of time on the other.

A galaxy is a cross-section of an interfolding, five-dimensional “torus”, or doughnut-shaped energy-field, the spiral arms merely reflecting the vast and invisible field-lines of the galaxy’s enormous electromagnetic field (Fig. 8).

What we see is the visible part where matter accretes during the middle phase of galactic evolution, following the curved nature of space-time-gravity.  Each galaxy involutes eternally, oscillating from matter to antimatter, bouncing and rebounding, forever propelled by its own enormous mass around the Great Mobius Chain of Creation.  As each galactic mass crams itself (by its own gravitational collapse) into the impossible confines of its black hole singularity, space-time and matter-energy are squeezed into a direction that is beyond normal comprehension.... “squirted” in the ultimate direction that the curved geometry of gravity leads: to the point on the opposite side of space-time from the initial beginning point, or quasar, to finish out the full circuit as antimatter, on the “other side of the mirror”.... of the mobius strip.

But do time and the universe precisely repeat themselves eternally?  This, of course, is unknowable, but we feel that Eternal Spirit does not suffer boredom.  We must remember that the world-line of each galaxy around the mobius strip is only a temporal path, an abstraction.... Galaxies are really evolving events of localized, spinning matter-energy, and behind each “point in time” on the strip there is room for an infinite number of points (wave after wave) separated by the smallest possible fraction of a second and never meeting, though they share the same world-line.  And what if each line takes a slightly different path around the strip each full cycle?  No two horse-races are identical, though the race-track remains the same.  The possibilities grow truly infinite.

The Big Bang Theory postulates only a segment of Creation by anyone’s measuring stick.  One can only go back as far as the original proposed mass-point, the super-dense aggregate of all the universal matter-energy that supposedly exploded some 15-20 billion years ago, resulting in the “expanding” universe.  What of before?

If all the universal matter-energy were at one time concentrated in a singular mass-point, the outwardly expanding explosion would necessarily result in a decrease in density of the matter-energy as it fans outward.... the relative distance between galaxies becoming greater with distance from the initial point and time of creation.  Such is not the case.  If we gaze outward across the cosmos, we see far more galaxies than we could possibly count, arranging themselves electromagnetically and gravitationally into vast, churning clumps, sheets and filaments, with large empty spaces in between.... A cosmic version of Swiss cheese.  But the average distance between far-off galaxies appears to be the same as that between the galaxies nearest to us in space-time: approximately 10-100 galactic widths apart!
 
So.... the Big Bang Theory would suggest to us that the farther an object recedes from us, the faster its velocity (according to a recessional interpretation of the cosmological red-shift), but there is no spreading out over time!  According to the Big Bang, the universe has managed to expand since its beginning, but has, curiously enough, managed to retain the same relative distance between galaxies into recent times (as observed by studying galaxies and galactic groupings, near and far).... a built-in contradiction.
 
If the known universe has a visible limit of about 15 billion light-years in any direction we look, then we are at the center of a sphere of visibility that had a minimum diameter of 30 billion light-years fifteen billion years ago, when the light from these events and objects first began moving toward us.  If (as the Big Bang postulates) the universe began as a single exploding mass-point some 15 billion years ago, how could it have had a minimum diameter of 30 billion light-years at the same time?  The Big Bang is besotted with such conceptual contradictions and paradoxes.

An off-shoot of the Big Bang model called Inflation theory has been put forward to explain this paradox. According to Inflation, the universe instantly expanded to its present (or nearly it’s present) size immediately following the Big Bang....then the laws of physics took over. How convenient. This has the scientific profundity of the Book of Genesis: In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth....then the laws of physics took over.

One of the most cogent (but nevertheless flawed) arguments for universal expansion is voiced by Stephen Hawking in his book, “A Brief History of Time”: If the universe were not expanding, it would have to be contracting due to the inward tendency of its own overall gravity.  Hawking naively envisions the universe as a simple, expanding four-dimensional sphere.  So, what would keep this universal sphere from collapsing on itself if it were not expanding?
 
Einstein was plagued by this same conceptual conundrum.  Determining from contemporary astronomical observation that there was no collapse in progress, he concluded that the universe was “static”.... that is, neither expanding nor contracting.  This appeared to contradict his theory of General Relativity, which seemed to suggest that gravity should cause a universal contraction.  Ultimately this led him (somewhat fretfully) to add what he called a “cosmological constant” to the General Relativity equations.  This constant was a mathematical convenience which added to the equations a repulsive factor that precisely counter-balanced the inward pull of gravity and made a static universe easier for him to live with.  This bit of mathematical hedging never set well with him, however, and he later referred to it as his life’s greatest error.  (Actually, his final exclusion of Mach’s Principle from the General Relativity equations was the greater error.)
 
But why indeed does it all not collapse?

If the universe were truly a sphere, this would certainly occur.  Those galaxies at the outer extremities would have nothing gravitationally attracting them outward, but everything attracting them inward.  Hence, a collapsing universe would be occurring around us now.  Looking outward, however, we see no such inward movement, no overall blue-shift of light to indicate that the galaxies in the nearby, “recent” universe are rushing toward us.  In fact, there seems to be random overall movement, with various large clusters and filaments of galaxies drifting in various directions.... the “Great Texture.”

The universe, however, is not a conventional sphere with an inside and an outside.  It is, rather, a “hypersphere” with an extra-dimensional curvature of its own.... above the four dimensions of space and time that we normally comprehend.  Imagine, if you will, a mobius-strip condensed and somehow rendered into a sphere that constantly interfolds in cyclical fashion.... a spherical “yin-yang”.  Here we encounter the limitations of the logical process, but this is, nevertheless, the elusive nature of our universal hypersphere (Fig. 9).  

If one thinks only in terms of length, width and depth (the way we normally view our 3-D world around us), one can easily conjure an image of a conventional sphere.... a ball.  But adding the fourth and fifth dimensions of time and gravity adds a higher curvature to the ball.  It is as if the three-dimensional space of our former perspective were somehow compressed onto the “surface” of this higher dimensional curvature, this hypersphere (much the same as our mobius-strip metaphor, in which we, for analogical and illustrative purposes, compressed four-dimensional space-time onto the two-dimensional surface of the mobius-strip).  Therefore, any movement outward from us in our physical universe, in whatever direction we choose, is merely movement around the surface of our “hyperball”.

We must resort to metaphor to grasp this sort of thing.  Metaphor is simply “intuitive logic”.... a finger pointing at the Moon, in Zen-speak.  The normal process of logic does not serve us here.  Mathematical logic cannot grasp infinity.... Like the game of chess, it must have crisp, finite boundaries in which to function.  Chess would be meaningless without the parameters imposed by the edges of the game-board and the restrictions placed on the movement of each piece.  Metaphor makes use of a simplified analogy to point to, or imply, a higher truth that cannot be stated in normal, logical terms.  The mind has to take a leap....

Imagine a race of creatures that inhabit only a flat, two-dimensional plane.... an intelligent lichen, or some such entity.  Imagine further the difficulty of explaining the third dimension of “depth” to them.  Such is our dilemma in grasping the higher curvature of gravity.  As observers, we are embedded within the space-time curvature and therefore cannot easily detect its immediate presence, just as our astronauts traveling at relativistic velocities cannot immediately apprehend the phenomenon of time-dilation (a manifestation of space-time curvature).  By their own reckoning, the flow of time does not change, and only upon returning to Earth and comparing their aging process (and their clock) with that of their colleagues on Earth does the curvature become apparent.  Likewise, the flow of a river is not apparent to one floating down it in a fog, until the fog lifts and one notices the banks passing by.  Things disappear around the bend of the river just like they disappear around the curvature of the universe, of space/time/gravity.  The cosmological red-shift we observe as we gaze across the unapparent curvature of space-time is simply “looking at the banks.”

To repeat a previous paragraph, dimensionality is a hierarchically nestled total, like the Chinese box puzzle with its box within a box within a box.... The first dimension allows only linearity, a point stretching into a line.  The second dimension allows the plane, creating a higher reality that contains, but is greater than, the line.  The third dimension allows the solid, a volume that contains, but is greater than, the line and the plane.  The fourth dimension of time likewise contains, but is greater than, length, width and depth: As one walks across a room, one progresses through time as well, as a higher dimension of movement.  All of these are hierarchically contained within the fifth and greatest, all-inclusive dimension of gravitational curvature.

If we can accept this higher perspective of the cosmos, then all galaxies are being “pulled” equally from all directions simultaneously.  There is no gravitational bias either inwardly or outwardly in our universe (except in the immediate vicinity of massive bodies), since “inward” and “outward” are both just directions around the surface of our weirdly curved hypersphere.  If the hyperspherical, directional curvature of universal gravity (Mach’s Principle, again) is the same in all directions around us, a stasis is reached.... no universal collapse is possible.

The cosmological red-shift is simply a product of the curvature of the universal hypersphere.... the higher dimensions of gravity and time.

It is not difficult to see why the Big Bang model has assumed such a fundamental place in twenty-first century cosmology, particularly since the phenomenon of the Doppler recessional red-shift does indeed exist for all objects truly receding from us in space.  To transfer this explanation to the entirety of the red-shifting distant cosmos seems to make perfect sense.  This sort of conceptual error has ample historical precedent: Looking up, it makes perfect sense that the Sun circles around the Earth.  After all, one can see it rise in the east, pass overhead and sink in the west, after which our logical processes quite sensibly tell us that it passes beneath the Earth and eventually rises again each morning to begin another circuit.  Such was the obvious Ptolemaic view as defended by the Church of Rome for well over a thousand years.

Then along came Nicholas Copernicus with his smart-assed, contradictory and quite heretical view of solar geometry, having the audacity to imply that the Earth and other planetary bodies circled the Sun, that things weren’t exactly as they seemed.  And our perspective on things “out there” hasn’t been the same since....

Such is the dilemma of the “priesthood” of cosmology today.... Many careers (and hence, egos) are tied up in the perpetuation of the Big Bang model, causing many of its proponents to play fast and loose with the available data in order to avoid conceptual change.  This type of hedging is totally at variance with the objective methodology of Science, which should be open to conceptual change if proven to be necessary.  Remember Einstein’s “cosmological constant”?

In the Cosmic Commode model there is no need for “dark matter”, “inflation”, “superstrings” or any of the various other conjectural conveniences periodically tagged onto Big Bang cosmology to disguise its many inconvenient paradoxes.  Also resolved is the riddle of the missing “antimatter”: Physics has long held to the concept of “parity”.... that half of the mass of the universe should be composed of antimatter and the rest, of matter.  Thus far, however, no antimatter has been found (except for matter-antimatter paired particles briefly produced by collisions in particle accelerators and by  “cosmic ray” collisions with particles in the upper atmosphere), nor has its absence been satisfactorily explained.  With the Cosmic Commode model, parity is preserved.... The antimatter, one-half the total mass of the universe, resides on the “other side” of space-time.  The “inside-out”, black hole-quasar mechanism assures that matter must occupy one side....antimatter, the other.

Certain interpretations of the COBE (COsmic Background Explorer) satellite data have been claimed as a confirmation of the Big Bang model, since they show tiny fluctuations in the cosmic background micro-wave radiation reaching us from the edge of the visible universe.  These anomalies are purported to show that the Big Bang explosion contained variations in density that resulted in the clumpy texture of the universe today.  But this does not necessarily support or validate Big Bang Theory, and is rather like making the assumption that since a chimpanzee has been observed walking upright, it is therefore as intelligent as a human.  It is a monumental non sequitur.

The COBE data with its micro-wave fluctuations is simply showing the galactic “clustering” texture of the universe manifested into the infinite distance, its patchy light gradually being red-shifted down to the micro-wave bands of the spectrum until no further detection is possible.

There is, of course, a limit here as well.  We can see only so far around the curve of the macro-cosmos, just as we can see only so far into the quantum world of the micro-cosmos, the level of being at which pure electromagnetic energy, or light (the ultimate, most fundamental expression of Consciousness), is bound up in minute structures (or “fields”) we interpret as “particles”....  waves in the Ocean of Energy composing the “solid” matter of the world around us.

There are a maximum of seven potential electron shell-levels around each harmoniously humming atom (the fusion equivalent of  “do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti”).... Until we get above iron on the periodic table.  Many of the heavier elements have a total of eight orbital shell-levels, but they are unstable.... “disharmonious”, produced in the final moments of supernovae and having far more neutrons than protons and, hence, a “forced” outer shell-level to compensate.  They tend to break down given enough time.  This process is called “beta-decay” and is responsible for what is called the “weak force” of Nature.... Actually a subtle balancing act on the part of Nature to stabilize all matter-energy into a musically harmonious, seven-layered state, with closer ratios of neutrons and protons in the nucleus.  The “weak force” is brought about by the unstably massive nature of the heavier, 8-layered atoms, as the extra neutrons break down and throw off energy to achieve an impossible harmonic balance.... “Impossible” because the counter-entropic, steam-roller, crushing effect of gravitational curvature continues to produce heavier elements (inside stars) that provide the “imbalance” that results in more gravitational curvature and the “toppling forward” of the whole process in space-time.... the ever-propagating Wave of Being.

But is any of it truly solid?

I lean forward and rap on the fossil-festooned rock beneath our feet, “bang, bang”.... Show me one “solid” thing in this rock slab.  In fact, show me one truly solid thing anywhere in the universe.  All about us, no matter where we look, what we look at or how closely we look at it, all we find are patterns of energy that our senses invest with the illusion of solidity.  Reality is truly simple.... It's just that our minds take on some rather complex assumptions to prop up this illusion of solidity before us, this dualistic, matter-energy “stage-setting” we commonly perceive as “reality”.  The nature of Life (the Dream of Eternal Spirit) requires that we weave webs of complexity and apparent separateness to make it all seem “real”.  To wake up from the Dream is to perceive directly the elegant simplicity of Oneness.... and our own true Identity.

As animate awareness moves (via light) from place to place in the cosmos, it inevitably becomes subject to the confining nature of relativistic processes.  The “Eternal Present” (what we regard as “here and now”) embraces the entire universe simultaneously.  Only our limited means of perception (be-shackled by the speed of light) prevent us from experiencing the whole of it.  This simultaneous Wholeness, then, becomes fragmented into apparently separate matter-energy “events”, and Consciousness simultaneously (and playfully) follows suit.  Not only are events of physical phenomenae subject to this relativistic separation, but Consciousness itself fragments into an infinitude of “consciousness-events”, or ego-manifesting “identities”.  All these identities, without exception, initially regard themselves as “real”, self-separate and alone.  It’s the nature of the Great Game: an infinitude of egos, lost in a universe of fragmentation, seeking a return to Oneness....

Such is the primal cause of human spirituality, and such is the nature of cosmological speculation in general.  To gaze across the cosmos is to “see through a glass, darkly”.  Penetration of this mystery calls upon both the process of mathematical deduction and the process of intuitive imagination.

The physical, involuting, matter-energy universe is but the “texture” of Consciousness.... Eternal Spirit playing with Itself.... God as merry-go-round.

This is a great time to be alive, to be at the crest of the Wave, to be part of the moving Self-awareness of the cosmos: a teleological journey, the unfolding of which is its own purpose.

A salute to the fossil beds, the Earthen memories beneath our feet....

And a message rises up from them, felt in our hearts and resonating, wave-form, across the aeons:

WE ARE TIMELESS CONSCIOUSNESS
WE ARE ONE
I AM WE
I AM ONE
I AM

 

Namasté.

 

 
  The material for this treatise was taken from “The Other Side of God”, a more comprehensive work by the author. 
To obtain a copy, please send $12.95 (ppd.) to:
Phil Mayhew
Post Office Box 88
Beersheba Springs, TN  37305
E-mail Phil: otherside@blomand.net  

 

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