The Oscillating Universe

EVERY time a new material universe clicks out of existence at this high-speed oscillation, our sense of self must carry over from each one to the next, as otherwise we would be incapable of developing and making choices. That is our soul’s function. It has the capacity to bridge one universe to the next so we can recognise ourselves (and experience relative time and space as a constant) and be a witness to creation, even though, like all matter, we are fading in and out of existence at a quantum field level. So the soul carries the potential template for a higher level of evolution and incorporates all that has gone prior to it.

‘Creation’s Witness’, a poem by the 17th century Afghan poet Mirza Abdul Qader Bedil, beautifully expresses the relationship between humanity and the instantly oscillating Universe from whence comes our experience of existence:

       At time’s beginning

            that beauty

       which polished creation’s mirror

            caressed every atom

       with a hundred thousand suns.

 

       But this glory

           was never witnessed.

       When the human eye emerged,

            only then was it known.

The relaton theory says that the cosmological Big Bang simultaneously released awareness energy and material energy. The arc of descent is the material energy that requires more relatons to hold everything together as they try to break up. The arc of ascent consists of relatons seeking relationships; and, as things join together and evolve, relatons are released, and these freed relatons go into the universal relaton field, the totality of the oscillation alpha to omega.

Everything that exists has a relaton field made up of two types of energy, objective energy or the arc of descent, and subjective energy, the arc of ascent, which draws everything back through awareness to the ‘I am’ pole. These two energies are entwined in creating any particular quantum level, conscious choices generate pattern-matching throughout the Universe, and pull it all together. And that arc goes from the ‘I am’ state to the pure energy state and contains all of the past right up to the present moment of manifestation.

It is easy to find mystical poetry that expresses a heightened sense of the true nature of how the Universe works from the old cultures that were steeped in religious symbolism. But modern poets, too, have written about it. T. S. Eliot, for example, in ‘Burnt Norton’, the great opening poem of his Four Quartets, intuited the essence of eternal truth and wrote of it thus:

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;

   Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,

But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,

   Where past and future are gathered.

Neither movement from nor towards,

   Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point,the still point,

There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.

These lines are remarkable precisely because they are so completely steeped in the concept of the instantly oscillating Universe. Every word is extraordinarily relevant and it is astonishing how, without stating the concept of the instant oscillation process in concrete language, Eliot somehow summons it up.

Let’s just take each line one at a time:

At the still point of the turning world. The Universe is in oscillation, going out as the waveform of a particle, and coming back to a dimensionless point, the singularity. And then the world (all matter) goes round and round the still point, emanates from it and goes back to it.

Neither flesh nor fleshless. Clearly it is neither flesh nor fleshless because it is both. The Universe requires a human observer, a mystic, to complete the trinity with omega and alpha at either end of the oscillation pole. The observer is the activating agent around which the Universe dances. The perfected man is “flesh”, but the oscillation is not flesh, so by saying it’s “neither flesh nor fleshless” is correct, because it is both. This is human destiny: to be the observer that maintains the Universe. Humanity, as unlikely as it may seem from our usual perspective, is the essential link between the past, the present and the future.

Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is, / But neither arrest nor movement. To get across in words the notion that the oscillation is a single continuous event outside space and time is nigh on impossible, but here Eliot almost does it. There is a “still point”, but it’s neither “from” nor “towards” because it’s both; the oscillation goes out from the still point creating matter and back into it again. The command that follows applies because the Universe contains a fixed point and movement continuously and simultaneously at one moment. The singularity point itself is actually made up of energy restricted by information and so is neither arrest on its own nor movement on its own, it is arrest and movement together.

And do not call it fixity, Where past and future are gathered. How can the poet call it fixity if it continually oscillates? The Universe is going in and out of existence, continually updating itself, outside space and time and in only one instant. The past and the future are gathered in this still point.

Neither movement from nor towards,/Neither ascent nor decline.  We are saying the Universe descends down to total chaos and then climbs up again to unity of all knowledge, so it is “neither ascent nor decline” because it’s both – and the balance is kept.

Except for the point, the still point, / There would be no dance, and there is only the dance. Everything comes from the still point, so that the raw dance of the Universe oscillating in and out of existence could not happen without the still point, because everything comes from it. But the still point could not be without the dance. There is only the dance – the never-ending waltz of the eternal triangle.

 Eliot’s poem could not more comprehensively describe the theory we are putting forward, and in so few words. He sensed something and his poetic gift expressed it with exquisite precision. Depending on your perceptiveness of spirit, you may recognise the profundity of the pattern of truth in the poem straight away, or you may need to cultivate a connection with it over time, by carefully following the argument we have set out until you have absorbed it bit by bit.

Words are the transport for meanings: wise stories, descriptions, poems and songs can, over time, create in us a bridge to reality. So if we hear a concept described to us again and again, and perhaps in different ways (known as the ‘scatter’ principle), eventually a rich enough pattern builds up in our mind to form a template or blueprint that will reach out and, in a moment of revelation, pattern-match with the universal relaton field so we can, as Sufis say, ‘return home’.

Perfected mystics who have accessed reality directly and been transformed by it may also use poetry as a teaching aid to help others make that journey. But they write as though they are the totality, not an observer of it like Eliot. Nearly 300 years ago the Sufi Mirza Khan Ansari wrote the following beautiful poem that serves to illustrate this point:

How shall I define what thing I am?

   Wholly existent, and non-existent I am.

Sometimes, a speck of dust in the disc of the sun;

   At others, a ripple on the water’s surface.

Now I fly about on the wind of association,

   Now I am a bird of the incorporeal world ...

I have enveloped myself in the four elements.

   I am the cloud on the face of the sky ...

In the love of the devoted, I am the honey,

   In the soul of the impious, the sting.

I am with everyone, and in all things;

   Without imperfection – immaculate I am.

        How almost incredible this poem is, as if the Universe itself is speaking! I am a “speck of dust” (a particle), and “a ripple on the water’s surface” (a wave) – the quantum theory in a poetic nutshell.

        In effect Ansari is saying, “I am the potential of everything”, because, when he merged with the singularity, he knew it was the potential of everything. When a mystic observes the oscillation they know they perceive the essence of it and, since essence is all the same, become that essence. They are transformed.

His phrase “the wind of association” is the perfect metaphor for the universal relaton field: everything is always in relationship to everything else. What he is experiencing directly is the energy field and the information field. And that is all there is: the entire creation. Everything is oscillating. Everything is part of the dance. And the observer leads the dance.

It’s amazing how words can help us connect up to reality through what at one level appears to be paradox. In this case we are forced to ask, how can something be movement and not movement? It’s like a riddle, nonsensical until you know the answer. But once you have absorbed the concept of the instant oscillating Universe, it makes total sense and the paradox dissolves. From then on, much of the mystical poetry from all cultures is transformed for you into technical descriptions of something profoundly central to existence. This, for example from the 17th century Persian poet Abu-Talib Kalim: “We are waves whose stillness is non-being. We are alive because of this, that we have no rest.”

As if entering into a dark room and catching tantalising glimpses of treasures in the darkness, with intense concentration a gifted poet can drop deeply into the REM state and, if they have sincere questions in mind, have their questions answered. But these answers are at first merely reflections of ultimate truth, and it doesn’t necessarily follow that they transform the poet. His struggle to find metaphors to express in poetic form his transient insights about something that is inexpressible may nevertheless act as a bridge to truth for someone else, even if the poet hasn’t crossed the divide himself.

T. S. Eliot was deeply interested in metaphysical questions, studying not only Western spiritual traditions, but also Eastern ones, even going to the extent of learning Sanskrit and Pali so he could read texts in the original. This effort raised profound questions in him and drove him on. By sincerely searching for answers, he was able to enter the REM state trance and intuit the answers. But there is a difference between doing this and directly perceiving truth in a way that transforms the person’s essence so that they become the truth.

       The way of the poet is not open to many of us but it is possible to travel by other methods. We can unlock meaning in mystical poetry with an organising idea. How often do you sense that there is a profound meaning in a poem but, without an organising idea to consolidate it, you can’t hold on to it and it slips away from consciousness? Eliot knew this, as we see from other lines of his great ‘Burnt Norton’, where he reveals his intuitive grasp of the nature of truth but also that he is aware of the failure of words to hold on to what he has grasped.

    Words, after speech, reach

        Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,

    Can words or music reach

        The stillness, as a Chinese jar still

    Moves perpetually in its stillness.

        Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts,

    Not that only, but the co-existence,

        Or say that the end precedes the beginning,

    And the end and the beginning were always there

        Before the beginning and after the end.

    And all is always now. Words strain,

        Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,

    Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,

        Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,

    Will not stay still.

With a big enough organising idea in our mind we can read those otherwise puzzling lines and see what the poet was getting at. The end does precede the beginning – because the Universe is in a state of instant oscillation outside time and space – and from that viewpoint it’s as legitimate to say that the end precedes the beginning as to say the beginning precedes the end. The end and the beginning are always there because, in the trinity, where the observer is, in the eternal ‘now’, the end and the beginning are part of the manifesting movement. You can’t have nothing – omega – without all information, which means total knowledge, being totally constrained – the end, in other words, and the beginning.

In Eliot’s perfect description of the perfect man observing the perpetual oscillation of the Universe, you feel the hidden depth to the poem, but someone without an organising idea to guide them is left with a mass of contradictions. And the poet vents his frustration at this. His next line reads: “Words strain, / Crack and sometimes break, under the burden, / Under the tension, slip, slide, perish.” He senses that he really hasn’t done justice to his intuition. The value of an organizing idea is that it can hold in your mind the multiple perspectives that the poet is trying to express through his oxymoronic, self-contradicting language. Instead of sliding away, the meaning stabilises into a useful myth that can help carry you to the truth beyond words.

It is because a myth is an organising idea that makes it more powerful than poetry. Poetry is wonderful, it moves you and points you in the right direction, but you can’t easily hold on to its paradoxical content. A myth is more substantive and carries the mechanism by which you can build the bridge to the truth without it constantly crumbling away, as happens with poetry. A myth, therefore, is what unlocks poetry. When myth and poetry complement each other, just as the right and left hemispheres of the brain do, or partners in a harmonious relationship do, you can make real progress. It’s like smelling a beautiful meal as it is cooking, being tantalised by the aromas, and then eating and digesting it to sustain yourself. (The word ‘tantalised’, incidentally, comes from Tantalus, a king in Greek mythology who was condemned to stand in water that receded whenever he tried to drink it, and stand beneath fruit that moved away whenever he reached for it, which is exactly how approaching the truth through poetry alone feels.)