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The Origin of The Universe

OUR CURRENT WORLD SITUATION

This book describes what I believe to be a deep and long-lasting new paradigm about where we come from and the underlying factors that drive evolution in all of its aspects, including those that are behind the course of human history. As with all true new paradigms, this is based on new facts and discoveries that may change how we look at the universe we live in, discoveries with consequences that until fairly recently would have been considered unthinkable. This new paradigm is, however, not merely theoretical but has very direct consequences for how we understand the world at the present moment and what we may be able to do about it.

The world people are experiencing now, at the time of writing (July 2016), is quite different from only a few years ago. In the United States, the number of mass shootings is multiplying, and politicians are saying things that would have seemed horrifying up until quite recently. The feeling of a mental crisis driven by fear is quite apparent, and the rules of the system are no longer as set as previously. Rationality and wisdom seem to be at risk of disappearing, and many fundamental values of freedom and democracy are threatened. On the other side of the ocean, in the Middle East, jihadist terrorists are displaying a brutality that has not been seen for centuries. Violence is not a new thing in human history, but what seems very marked at the current time is the disappearance of boundaries and the lack of respect for life that goes with them. It seems fair to say that we are in a deepgoing civilizational crisis, which includes the world’s religions. But what are the roots of all these changes? Most answers that political commentators propose point to immediate reasons, based on a short-term perspective of events. We will here instead ask if there are deepgoing long-term factors behind them, which originate in how the evolution of the universe is designed. To answer this I will here present a scientific theory for the evolution of the universe from the Big Bang to the current time that explains what is happening in the world today. That would also imply that humanity has a destiny that we all need to connect to if we are to be able to move forward successfully.

That there is such an underlying time plan for the evolution of the universe is indeed what I am suggesting. I do not think it is possible to understand what is going on today without a fundamental paradigm shift in how we are thinking about evolution. In this book, I thus provide a new context for understanding human history, a long-term perspective the reader has likely not heard before. At the very least, I hope to explain why the world is so different from only a few years ago. At the end of the book, in chapter 9, I also provide what I believe to be useful tools and guidelines that the reader may work with to align with the destiny of humanity. Hence, in the midst of the chaos we should not miss out on the current constructive possibilities for aligning with the higher purpose of humanity that have now opened up to us. Maybe the chaos is there to create space for a better world to emerge. Perhaps it is because of these new possibilities—generated by the Ninth Wave of creation—that more and more people are beginning to see that everything is connected with everything else. Maybe they are also the reasons that you are holding this book in your hand.

In this new perspective, no one is powerless. Yet, you may need to summon your inner courage and ask your higher self for guidance, as what is presented here may be different from many established ideas in both science and religion. I can, however, assure the reader that the perspective is rational, and I have attempted to present it in such a way that not too big leaps of faith need to be made. Hence, the book begins with this chapter about the birth of the universe, which provides a new framework for understanding our origins. We will then in a sequence of chapters study how and why life has emerged from this origin to what it is today and compare this to ancient creation stories. Regardless of whether the reader shares my conclusions, I think it is indisputable that this theory removes the boundaries between many thought systems and disciplines that previously seemed entirely separate. In chapters 7 and 8 we will return to look at our present situation, and hopefully the reader will, by then, have gained a completely new way of understanding the world. This may then serve for guidance to the Era of Fulfillment that will be discussed in the ninth and final chapter. Let us begin by gaining a new perspective of what our origins are through some very dramatic new findings in cosmology.

THE BIRTH OF THE UNIVERSE

How did the universe that we are living in come to be in the first place? To answer this question—fundamental for understanding the purpose of life—all human societies have had some form of creation stories, explanations of how the universe, the Earth, and human beings themselves have come into existence, and maybe also why it all exists in the first place. Ancient creation stories for the most part include some Creator God, or creator gods, and give the reasons he/they had for creating the world and the human beings. The major monotheist religions see a single God as the source of our existence, and in the Western world the creation story that dominated people, at least up until the seventeenth century, has been the biblical creation story (to be discussed further in chapter 5). For a long time this was interpreted to mean that the world was only six thousand years old and that all the species, including the humans, had been created “as is” at that point in time. As the mid-1700s brought a new way of thinking (to be discussed in chapter 6) it became increasingly clear, however, that the universe was much older than this and that the current Earth had been developed by geological processes over hundreds of millions of years. Evidence of fossilized species that no longer existed also made it clear that biologically speaking an evolution had taken place that was not consistent with the notion that all species were only a few thousand years old.

As a result, during the course of the nineteenth century the biblical creation story gradually lost ground in intellectual circles and step-by-step its various tenets had to be given up. As the beginning of the time line of evolution was gradually pushed backward, a void was thus created as to what was the true origin of the universe, a void that scientists, rather than priests, were now trying to fill. However, while it had already become clear that life on our own planet had been evolving for a very long time, evidence of evolution on a cosmic scale was late in coming, and as Einstein published his general theory of relativity in 1915 he still adhered to a model of a universe that was not evolving.

In the 1920s, however, the Belgian astronomer (and Catholic priest) Georges Lemaître¹ was the first to propose what later has become known as the Big Bang theory. Based on observations of the movements of galaxies he proposed the theory that the universe was expanding and had its origin in a “primeval atom” or “cosmic egg” and developed a mathematical theory for such an origin of the universe. In 1927, the American astronomer Edwin Hubble² confirmed the validity of Lemaître’s ideas through a systematic study of the red-shift of galaxies, a study that then led Einstein to revise his earlier negativity toward an evolving universe. Einstein in fact at one point exclaimed that Lemaître’s theory was “the most beautiful and satisfactory explanation of creation to which I have ever listened.”³ Hence, there was a point when the primordial atom theory would be seen as something that could unify science and religion, and some scientists were open-minded about this. Later, in 1951, Pope Pius XII declared that Lemaître’s theory provided a scientific validation for the Catholic view of creation. Lemaître himself, however, objected to this proclamation, arguing that his theory was neutral and that there was neither a connection nor a contradiction between his religion and his theory.⁴ We can only speculate about Lemaître’s motives, but presumably Lemaître did not want to alienate parts of the scientific community from his theory (known since 1949 as the Big Bang theory⁵) and so persuaded the pope to stop discussing its consequences for creation.

Ironically then, despite the fact that the originator of the Big Bang theory was himself a devout Catholic and priest, Lemaître’s stance opened the field for the purely materialist interpretations for the birth of the universe, which have dominated this area of research ever since. Eventually more or less the entire scientific community was also won over to the Big Bang theory, notably through the discovery in the 1960s of the so-called cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) by radioastronomers Penzias and Wilson.⁶ This CMBR is an afterglow from the very high initial temperatures in the Big Bang when the universe reached billions of degrees. Although the universe has since cooled down considerably, the CMBR can still be measured and provides information about how the temperatures were distributed at the time the universe was born. Since the temperature measured in this CMBR was consistent with what was predicted, the discovery of the CMBR, similar to the discovery of the expansion of galaxies, pointed to an origin of the universe in a singularity in the distant past. The Big Bang came to be conceived of much as a giant explosion occurring for no reason, and even if scientists will consider such a description an oversimplification, it captures the gist of this view.

Following the discovery of the CMBR a fairly consistent standard model of cosmology has been developed within the scientific community describing how after the Big Bang space-time emerged in an inflationary manner, and how elementary particles and forces of nature, as well as galaxies, stars, and planets, subsequently came into existence. The technicalities of this model are too complex for most people to engage themselves in, and the Big Bang theory as it is presented by academia has become a “secular” alternative to the creation stories of the past. It has been stripped of everything that is not measurable and has neither a creator nor a purpose. Through this trajectory, official science has arrived at a view of the world that exists for no other reason than that some fifteen billion years ago there was a big explosion. Or, in the words of Nobel Prize–winner Steven Weinberg, who wrote a much acclaimed book about the Big Bang theory titled The First Three Minutes, “The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.”⁷ Naturally, even if the vast majority of humanity still believes in a higher power behind the existence of the universe and themselves, it seems difficult for an intellectually astute person to simply neglect such a theory as the Big Bang theory, which is supported by so many observations and is sanctioned by official science. We are thus faced with a momentous question: Are we just by-products of a giant explosion, or is there something amiss in how official science has interpreted the birth of the universe?

It then deserves to be pointed out that most cosmologists working with the Big Bang theory in the past fifty years have had a fundamentally atheist-materialist agenda and have sought to create a model where “God” can be taken out of the picture and the various steps in the continued evolution of the universe can be explained as a series of accidents. This does not mean that they are producing false data, but it does mean that they look at reality through a filter, which makes them look away from every hint of knowledge that may point to the existence of a higher spiritual power. Not surprisingly then, people at large have come to perceive the Big Bang as being in conflict with an intelligent design of the universe. Remarkably few books on spirituality or critical new thought has even discussed the birth of the universe, despite the fact that this would seem to be absolutely critical for understanding who we are and why we are here.

EMERGING PROBLEMS WITH THE STANDARD MODEL OF THE BIG BANG THEORY

I should here say that I do not on my own part question the central tenets of the Big Bang theory or that some fifteen billion years ago there was a point of beginning for the universe. Yet, as we shall see, there are very serious problems with the official interpretation of the Big Bang theory and data have been accumulating, especially more recently, making this even clearer. One obvious such problem is that the world that has resulted from the initial explosion does not look like the aftermath of an explosion. How did you, reading this book, emerge from a universe of billions of degrees? The world we are living in in fact looks very structured also at the largest levels of the universe with its galaxies, star systems, and planets. Official science explains the emergence of such structures by reference to “random fluctuations,” and life itself is seen as something that has accidentally “popped up” on our own planet and then evolved through “random mutations.” How likely does this seem? In fact, in the models of modern physics and biology, life is still essentially considered as an accidental spin-off effect of the laws of physics and chemistry rather than the very reason for the existence of the universe. However, common sense tells us that such an immensely intricate and complex phenomenon as a human being could not just be a result of an undirected explosion, and we must ask: How did the universe as a whole become structured?

As a second more general problem pertaining to the standard model of cosmology, astronomers have discovered that stars in galaxies do not behave as expected from Newtonian physics and that galaxies are moving away from each other at an accelerating speed. This has led them to postulate that 95 percent of the matter of the universe exists in two unknown forms termed “dark matter” and “dark energy”⁸ even though there is no direct evidence that either one of these entities actually exists. Abstract ideas based on mathematical models rather than actual observations are thus now being used to patch up a model of the universe that is bursting at its seams. Although cosmologists will congratulate themselves on being able to explain certain phenomena by their standard model, it can hardly be considered a success that 95 percent of the matter of the universe cannot be accounted for in this model. There are thus reasons to wonder how long a model with so little explanatory power will survive. This obviously also sets question marks for many other things that this model is said to have explained, including the purported randomness of the birth of the universe. Some cosmologists representing the official view of science are also recognizing that this branch of science is in a crisis⁹ and that we may be approaching a significant paradigm shift.

To scrutinize the validity of the current theory about the birth of the universe it seems that we should first study the data upon which it is based. The main source of information that we currently possess about the birth of the universe is the abovementioned CMBR. The CMBR reflects the distribution of temperatures at a time of only about three hundred thousand years after the Big Bang (which took place about fifteen billion years ago), and so measurements of the CMBR really give an infant picture of the universe (compared to the age of the universe this is like taking a photograph of a child only twelve hours after it was born). This is as close in time that we may currently come to the birth of the universe, because no light existed before this, and so the CMBR is important if we want to learn about the nature of the universe at its inception.

Up until the twenty-first century, the predominant idea was that at the largest scale the universe had no structure, an idea that was codified in the so-called cosmological principle.¹⁰ This theory stated that at the largest scale the universe was homogeneous and isotropic, meaning similar in all directions. This was a principle, or assumption, upon which much of modern physics, and especially the general theory of relativity, was based. If the cosmological principle were true it would have to be expected that the universe also at the very early point in time measured by the CMBR would have no structure or favored directions. This assumption, however, had to be tested, and so the COBE satellite (see fig. 1.1a below)¹¹ was sent up in 1989 to measure the microwave radiation and map out its distribution in the universe.

The COBE satellite (fig 1.1a) did discover anisotropies (nonuniformities) in the distribution of the CMBR but no significant structuring factor that could be used to explain any aspects of the further evolution of the universe. This supported the previously predominant belief that the universe at its largest scale was homogenous and isotropic as the anisotropies found appeared random in nature. The cosmological principle thus seemed supported. It was, however, recognized that the resolution of the COBE measurements was relatively low, and the question remained as to whether a satellite able to measure the CMBR with a higher resolution would still validate this principle.

THE TREE OF LIFE HYPOTHESIS FOR THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE

From my own perspective, having studied ancient cosmologies and especially that of the Maya, it seemed, however, that the universe should have a Tree of Life, or, if you like, a World Tree, at its center. Something should account for how the entire universe is connected and has a coordinated direction. Yet, based partly on the abovementioned measurements of the COBE satellite, at the time of the writing of Solving the Greatest Mystery of Our Time: The Mayan Calendar (2001), I had to admit that there was no hard evidence that a Cosmic Tree of Life existed in the center of the universe, despite the fact that this was a central tenet of so many ancient traditions. Nonetheless, because Trees of Life (or axis mundi)¹² could be identified on the planetary and galactic levels as their rotational axes, it seemed reasonable that such a tree would exist also on a level encompassing the entire cosmos. In The Mayan Calendar and the Transformation of Consciousness (2004), I thus hypothesized the existence of such a Cosmic Tree of Life. But visions and ideas are one thing; hard evidence is another. Even then I had to recognize that the latter was still missing. The radiation from the Big Bang measured by the COBE satellite was essentially consistent with the notion that this was homogenously distributed in the early universe. This corroborated the consensus view in the scientific community that the early universe had no structure.

Figure 1.1. Three satellites measuring the cosmic background radiation with increasing resolution. a. the COBE satellite, b. the WMAP satellite, and c. the Planck satellite. Only the WMAP and Planck satellites had a sufficient resolution to identify the Cosmic Tree of Life (see fig. 1.2) in the infant universe. (Courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA)

In 2003, new satellite measurements of the CMBR had, however, begun to be recorded by means of the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, which provided much more accurate data of the afterglow from the Big Bang (WMAP, fig. 1.1b).¹³ Unexpectedly, when the WMAP data set was analyzed mathematically, an axis and polarized fields of temperature were discovered; the findings were published in 2004 by Max Tegmark and coworkers.¹⁴ These fields were organized somewhat like the panels of a basketball, which defined the direction of an axis through the early universe (fig. 1.2). Katharine Land and Joao Magueijo of Oxford University later verified these findings in an article titled “The Axis of Evil,”¹⁵ an unfortunate label with associations to President George W. Bush’s foreign policy. The name has, however, remained, partly because it is catchy and partly because the discovery of this axis seemed so disturbing to the established cosmology. As it appears from the WMAP, the early cosmos was thus not homogeneous but organized like a meatball on a toothpick. The center of the meatball, what seems to be the center of the universe, is located in the direction of the constellation of Virgo.¹⁶ Curiously, the associated great axis, which exists on an unfathomably supergalactic scale (a galaxy is a speck of dust in this context), lies in the plane of the ecliptic and has a direction that may be parallel to the equinoxes of our own Earth’s planetary orbit.¹⁷ Although this may be an accident, it may also mean that our own particular planet is aligned with the Cosmic Axis in a way that is conducive to the emergence of life here and that we are in a special place in the universe.

Figure 1.2. The cosmic microwave background with the “axis of evil” as measured by the WMAP satellite. Top: The cosmic microwave background in the original image from the WMAP study. Middle: After mathematical processing of the temperature variation a structure in the quadrupole axis becomes evident. Bottom: An octupole axis aligned with the quadrupole was discovered, which demonstrates the existence of an axis of evil. (Source: NASA and the WMAP team; used with permission: de Oliveira-Costa, Tegmark, Zaldarriaga, and Hamilton, “The Significance of the Largest Scale CMBR Fluctuations in WMAP”)

Already the very finding that the temperatures in the afterglow of the Big Bang lined up with an axis was remarkable, because according to established cosmology this universe is supposed to have come into existence by accident and should not at the largest scale display any structure (which could indicate that it may have an intelligent divine source). Naturally, as the existence of such an axis would put in question many of the assumptions of official science, with potentially far-reaching consequences for cosmology, the finding of this was questioned early on.¹⁸ Nonetheless, soon afterward, other studies were performed that validated the existence of the axis in dramatic ways: First it was found that the polarization of light from quasars (some of the brightest and most massive astronomical objects known, emitting huge amounts of radio waves) was influenced by their proximity to the axis.¹⁹ An interesting twist of this particular study was that the polarization seemed to corkscrew around the axis, and its authors suggested that a potential explanation to this effect is that the entire universe rotates around what in fact is its central axis. This would then be consistent with the idea that the universe as a whole is a spinning vortex generated by the axis and that it emerged as such from the very beginning. Professor Michael Longo at the University of Michigan, who studied the handedness of spiral galaxies (whether they revolved clockwise or counterclockwise) throughout the universe, made a second, equally dramatic finding. He found that a line separating the preference for the two types of handedness approximately lined up with the axis previously discovered in the WMAP study (fig. 1.2),²⁰ thus generating a mirroring effect.

These findings regarding the Cosmic Axis were very exciting, as they indicated this might also play a role for the structuring and large-scale evolution of the universe. The mirroring effect might also point to a fundamental polarity of the universe. The universe was not without a basic structure after all, and the Cosmic Axis seemed to have something to do with how this was created. In support of this, the study of the handedness of galaxies had been made independently of the WMAP study and could not have been distorted by some unknown influence from our own Earth or galaxy. Longo thus concluded that “a well-defined axis for the universe on a scale of ~170 Mpc would mean a small, but significant, violation of the Cosmological Principle and of Lorentz symmetry and thus of the underpinnings of special and general relativity.”²¹ If Longo is right, his data points to a universe that was polarized from the very beginning by the Cosmic Axis, resulting in the separation of galaxies that were either left- or right-handed from our own particular perspective. It hinted at the possibility that the Cosmic Axis created a basic duality throughout the universe.

What is more, if the handedness and spin axes of galaxies are directly related to the central axis of the universe, then this would mean that the formation of galaxies is not just a result of random fluctuations, which caused them to rotate. The spins of the galaxies would instead be related to that of the Cosmic Axis and probably have emerged in resonance with this. This would mean that all the galaxies of the universe are connected with this Cosmic Axis and so also with one another. If the different galaxies of the universe are not independent but retain a connection to its overall polarized structure created by the Cosmic Axis, this would also favor the idea that their evolution is connected and synchronized, something that may be crucial for the evolution of life. The most important aspect of this discovery is, however, that the existence of the Cosmic Axis shows that there was structure in the universe from its very inception, which puts in question the whole randomness philosophy and purported purposelessness of the universe that is upheld by official science.

That there are directions in the universe may at first seem hard to accept as we have all grown up with a view of the universe as having no “up” or “down,” with galaxies seemingly floating around in space with no connection to anything else. An overall structuring factor such as the Cosmic Tree of Life also seems at odds with Carl Sagan’s view that “our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark.”²² Nonetheless, in the view that is now emerging, and more evidence will be provided for this shortly, the entire universe with all of its galaxies has an overarching structure with directions emanating for the Cosmic Axis.

It was based on the above findings that I wrote The Purposeful Universe (2009), which presents an alternative theory not only to Darwinism but also to the scientific consensus view of the evolution of the universe at large. I then identified the so-called axis of evil as the Tree of Life of the ancients and especially of the Maya in whose time-based cosmology this had played a significant part. Very notably, since this Cosmic Axis had been discovered in the original microwave background radiation, I drew the conclusion that it was not the Big Bang that had created the Tree of Life but the emergence of the Tree of Life that had created the giant inflationary expansion called the Big Bang. Based on this model, it became possible to understand not only why and how the constants of nature had gained their particular values but also why the large-scale evolutionary processes of biological species followed wave patterns. It seemed that the discovery of the axis of evil was the icebreaker and that humanity was now beginning to rediscover the Cosmic Tree of Life, and maybe some steps would be taken toward unifying science and spirituality.

THE COVER-UP OF THE EXISTENCE OF THE TREE OF LIFE

As we will see later, the existence of a central axis in the universe at its inception has very profound and immediate consequences for how we can understand what is happening in today’s world. It also immediately touches upon the question about the nature of God and how the universe was created. Yet, the discovery of the Cosmic Axis did not reach the public in the way that it deserved, and it is quite obvious why. This is a case where a finding is so disturbing to the ruling paradigm that it may seem best for its adherents to cover it up by pretending that it is unimportant. All paradigm shifts obviously are uncomfortable for established science, but in this case the consequences are unusually far reaching as it affects our view of the very origin of the universe. Such a finding would in turn affect all branches of science, and this was too much for the scientific establishment to bear.

Thus, the Cosmic Axis has been essentially ignored in popular documentaries about cosmology (except for the independently made The Principle,²³ which several of the participating scientists later rejected).²⁴ This downplaying of the importance of the axis was true even after new measurements of the CMBR collected by the Planck satellite (fig. 1.1c) were published in 2013.²⁵ This satellite had a considerably higher resolution than the data recorded by the WMAP and verified the earlier findings of the existence of the axis of evil. Moreover, the detection method used by the Planck satellite was entirely different from that of the WMAP, showing that the axis did not come out of an instrumental error. In the words of George Efstathiou, a member of the team who made the study, “We can be extremely confident that these anomalies are not caused by galactic emissions and not caused by instrumental effects, because our two instruments see very similar features.”²⁶ Based on this, you would have expected that the scientists involved would have publicly announced that one of the most significant principles that science has been based on for four hundred years, the cosmological principle, now had to go out the window.

Yet, established science has held on to the old paradigm of randomness and meaninglessness. Wikipedia, which generally expresses the views of mainstream science, refers to the Cosmic Axis as the “axis of evil” under “other anomalies”: “Recent observations with the Planck telescope, which is very much more sensitive than WMAP and has a larger angular resolution, confirm the observation of the axis of evil. Since two different instruments recorded the same anomaly, instrumental error (but not foreground contamination) appears to be ruled out. Coincidence is a possible explanation. Chief scientist from WMAP, Charles L. Bennett suggested coincidence and human psychology were involved, ‘I do think there is a bit of a psychological effect; people want to find unusual things.’”²⁷

The desire to suppress the scientific finding is quite evident in this Wikipedia article. To an outsider it may seem strange that mainstream science expresses such negativity toward a seemingly neutral finding, labeling it as the “axis of evil” and disregarding the actual data by referring to them as a “psychological effect.” This attitude has been maintained despite the fact that the studies were performed and evaluated mathematically by groups of scientists from very prestigious institutions and that two consecutive mappings by satellites with increasing resolution showed the same Cosmic Axis.

Despite this, the verification by the Planck satellite of the existence of the Cosmic Axis created a certainty about its existence that has triggered new research, which has pointed even more strongly to its crucial role for how the universe is organized. A recent study (2016), for instance, indicates that the jet streams emanating from black holes are preferentially aligned with the Cosmic Axis,^28, 29 adding to the already existing studies that show that this axis is an overriding space-time organizer of the universe. This would imply that black holes are connected to the Cosmic Axis, and we come back to the theme that ultimately the entire universe is connected to the Cosmic Tree of Life.

THE ORIGIN OF YIN AND YANG

Equally dramatically, another study³⁰ has shown that the so-called axis of evil divided the universe in two halves, sky regions, with widely different numbers of quasars and galaxies. In one half of the sky separated by a plane through the Earth, the author, A. K. Singal, found thirty-three quasars and in the other only fifteen. He concluded: “If we include all the observed asymmetries in the sky distributions of quasars and radio galaxies in the 3CRR sample, the probability of their occurrence by a chance combination reduces to ~2 ×10⁻⁵.” These asymmetries were created along the central Cosmic Axis that then separates the universe into a light and a dark hemisphere (at least when it comes to quasars as radiation sources), with the Earth located in a very special place: the plane that separates these hemispheres. In another study comparing these cosmic hemispheres,³¹ the authors conclude: “Our results suggest that the Universe is intrinsically anisotropic with the axis of anisotropy pointing roughly towards the CMBR dipole direction.” This is obviously technical language, but what “intrinsically anisotropic” means is that the universe at large is divided into a light and a dark hemisphere, at least when it comes to certain forms of radio emissions, and that it is the Cosmic Axis that separates these two hemispheres. To me at least, the picture that is now emerging of the cosmos and its origin is truly mind-blowing, because it is so fundamentally different from what we have been taught and from our own experience of the night sky. When we look at this it may seem that the various stars are relatively evenly distributed in the sky. Yet, if we limit ourselves to certain large distant radio sources, which we cannot see with our eyes, it turns out that the radiation they emit divides the sky in two different hemispheres. This rings a bell of ancient cosmologies explaining the emergence of duality.

These findings imply that the axis (or as I prefer to say, the Cosmic Tree of Life) has introduced a duality on the largest scale of the universe, which in turn creates two separate fields of radiation. We may in fact talk about one half of the sky, the brighter, as yang, and the darker half as yin, separated by the Cosmic Tree of Life as a fundamental duality, which actually pervades the cosmos and reflects physical differences between the hemispheres of the universe (fig. 1.3). This duality, as we will see later, has most likely played a significant role in the evolution of life in the universe and is the very origin of the concept of duality. I should here admit that I have myself up until now always looked upon the duality of yin and yang as something “metaphysical,” but what these data are suggesting is that this polarity is intrinsic to how our universe was created in a direct physical sense. A worldview is thus now emerging where the separation between “metaphysical” and “physical” is beginning to disappear.

Figure 1.3. The Aztec hunab-ku symbol showing the duality of the Universe. (Reproduction based on the Codex Magliabenchiano; courtesy of Famsi.org)

I should also mention here that there is evidence coming forth³² that, as I proposed in The Purposeful Universe, the Tree of Life can be likened to a three-dimensional coordinate system. The Tree of Life is thus not merely an axis, but the source of space in all three dimensions, presumably with the potential of expressing much more complicated geometries as well. A relevant report regarding this was published in Nature magazine³³ in 2014, which also implied the existence of a Tree of Life at the center of the universe. This report described a computer simulation based on the largest data set of astronomical objects ever studied. By means of this, the evolution of the universe from only twelve million years after the Big Bang to our present time was followed. The remarkable thing is that this study shows that the universe in its entirety at its outset appears as a Cosmic Tree (fig. 1.4 below), which later develops into a bundle of branchlike filaments. A short video³⁴ of the simulation of the evolution of the universe can be watched on the Internet, and I recommend the reader to see it.

It is noteworthy that this simulation was published in Nature, the most prestigious of the scientific journals, because this means that its data has undergone a very strict scrutiny. Yet, it seems the scientists involved have been unable to see the full picture of the Tree of Life, which to an unbiased observer seems quite obvious. The conclusion to draw from this series of discoveries, going from the WMAP identification of the axis of evil to its verification by the Planck satellite to studies showing what role the Cosmic Tree of Life has in structuring the universe, is that far from being created as a random explosion called the Big Bang, all of the evolution of the universe is a result of the emergence of a Cosmic Axis, referred to by the ancients as the Tree of Life, and it is from this that the universe has gained the structure that it currently has.

It is exciting that this phenomenon, the Tree of Life, whose existence I had hypothesized prior to its discovery, has been found on the largest scale of the universe and that evidence is increasingly coming forth to support that this indeed plays a central organizing role for the universe. These findings allow us to create a holistic view of the universe that explains the emergence and evolution of life in a meaningful way and provides a basis for unifying science and spirituality. Yet, I do not think that these recent discoveries, with enormous consequences for how we look at our own role in the big scheme of things, have received the kind of attention that they deserve. Hence, it has not come to the public’s attention that a Cosmic Tree of life, a widespread component of the cosmologies of ancient peoples, has been verified by modern scientific techniques. In my view, the Big Bang was thus far from a random explosion. It was instead a stage-setting event, and in the next chapter we will see how the continued evolution of the universe is brought about through creation waves broadcast by the Tree of Life.

Figure 1.4. Image of the Cosmic Tree. (Used with permission from Bolshoi Cosmological Simulations, http://hipacc.ucsc.edu/Bolshoi/FAQ.html)

The creation of the universe, in other words, begins at the Big Bang with a vibration, which is to say a wave emanating from this axis. Or as it is stated in the Bible: “In the Beginning was the word” (John 1:1). The axis mundi, from which the waves of creation emanate, with the size of the diameter of the universe, may generate vibrational holograms creating conscious observers all over the universe who are in resonance with these waves. It is the origin of creation waves in the Cosmic Tree of Life that makes the evolution of the universe understandable and purposeful.

To summarize, over the past decade data have been forthcoming that have shattered not only the Cosmological Principle but also the view that the universe is essentially directionless and random in nature. We now know things about the birth of the universe that will be highly meaningful for understanding the way life on Earth has evolved. From the recent discoveries three conclusions may be drawn that especially deserve to be highlighted.

1. The entire universe has from its very inception been organized in relation to a Central Cosmic Axis, presumably its primeval organizer of space-time, and called by the ancient cultures of our planet the Tree of Life.
2. The Big Bang did not create the Tree of Life. Instead, the emergence of the Tree of Life created the Big Bang, space-time, the inflationary expansion of the universe, and all the subsequently emerging galaxies, star systems, and the life they harbor.
3. The Cosmic Axis induces a yin/yang polarity across the universe. The Earth is located on the plane that separates the yin and yang of the cosmos.

THE FRACTAL-HOLOGRAPHIC MODEL OF THE UNIVERSE

Geometry existed before the Creation. It is co-eternal with the mind of God. . . . Geometry is God himself.

JOHANNES KEPLER, HARMONICES MUNDI (1618)

It needs to be pointed out that the Cosmic Tree of Life is not a “thing” made of matter. Rather, it is the geometric source of the space-time through which the matter of the universe is organized. The Tree of Life is a name for a particular form of pure geometry, which underlies the structure of the universe. When this geometry was activated at the birth of the universe, its structure, and the effect of this on the energy released in the Big Bang, provided the basis for the evolution of life. You may then say that the Divine manifests itself as pure geometry, created through the effects this has on energy. The geometry of the Tree of Life is the chief space-time organizer of the universe, and it was through its activation and initial vibration that the evolution of the universe was set in motion. From this Cosmic Tree of Life, as we will see in the next chapter, waves are constantly emitted that give rise to vibrational holograms that shape the physical and mental aspects of life all over the universe. When we talk about manifesting the purpose of this creation, the discussion is based on an understanding that this started with the activation of an immensely powerful, overriding geometry from which the continued evolution of the universe may be understood.

The life of the universe can only emerge and be sustained if it is created by a synchronization of processes at many different levels. Systems such as galaxies, solar systems, or planets that seem partially autonomous are in fact synchronized in their movements with the evolutionary process so that they are able to sustain life. This synchronization of the different systems of the universe takes place because the Cosmic Tree of Life is reproduced at several lower levels, as was discussed in detail in The Purposeful Universe. Each level has a “tree”—a coordinate system made from pure geometry (see fig. 1.5 below)—at its core and these “trees” are entangled with the Cosmic Tree of Life according to a model where parts are subordinate to wholes. The creation of the universe thus depends on the coordination and synchronization of the geometries of the Tree of Life on several different levels. Understanding the evolution of life in the universe thus requires what may be called a fractal-holographic model,³⁵ according to which its different levels are connected in such a way that the microcosm reflects the macrocosm.

What is important to note in figure 1.5 is that the Cosmic Tree of Life discussed in this chapter represents the most encompassing level of the universe and is what the geometries of all the lower levels ultimately are connected to. What this means is that all life in the universe, including what we call extraterrestrial life in other galaxies or star systems, ultimately finds its origin and evolves based on wave information emanating from this same Cosmic Tree of Life. The model is called fractal-holographic, as the universe is not just one big hologram but instead is composed of a nested hierarchy of holograms within holograms, which also at lower levels have Trees of Life at their centers. It is the existence of Trees of Life at several different levels that makes the universe fractal and holographic in the first place. Each of these levels has a certain autonomy as the boundaries of the different systems are defined by the pure geometries of trees at different levels.

The fractal-holographic model means that what goes on at our own human (or organismic) level is profoundly conditioned by the systems, such as the galaxy and the solar system that are senior to our own system (our bodies), and, as we shall see, the creation waves affect the different levels in synchrony. Similarly, what happens at the cellular or atomic microlevels is determined by the context created by our own human level. That different levels or subsystems of the universe are connected in this way has been amply verified in earlier books of mine. The model explains how changes taking place in different subholograms are synchronized with the whole to produce the coherent universe that we experience. Thus, the universe has not come into existence as a random amassment of atoms; it is not created in a reductionist way from below to above. The systems of life at all levels are integrated as parts in a whole, and the organizing principles of the universe act from above to below based on creation waves emanating from the Cosmic Tree of Life, which ensures that its coherence is always maintained.

Figure 1.5. Fractal-holographic model of the universe where holograms are created at different levels by a fractal expansion of Trees of Life. (Diagram from The Purposeful Universe by the author, design courtesy of Bengt Sundin)

GOD

What the ancient traditions said about the Tree of Life will be discussed later, but we should already note that in several of these traditions the Tree of Life was looked upon as the Creator itself. If indeed we look upon the Tree of Life as the Divine that manifests itself as pure geometry, we can also explain three common traditional perceptions regarding the Divine. One is that the Divine is not of a material nature, another is that the Divine is everywhere, and a third is that the Divine is invisible. That God is not material fits well with the pure geometry of the Tree of Life, because this is not of a material nature. The pure geometry would also exist everywhere through the hierarchy of trees of which the fractal-holographic model is made up (fig. 1.5). Hence, if the Divine is expressed through this pure geometry it would indeed be omnipresent. Each living species, including our own, would also be created by this pure geometry, and so if the Tree of Life is the Creator it would also be invisible. This view is also consistent with another common idea about the nature of God, namely that God is in everyone. A fourth prevalent religious idea, namely that man has been created in the image of God, is also consistent with this model. If in figure 1.5 we identify the Tree of Life at the cosmic level with the Divine, then we can understand that the holographic projection of the human level is a reflection of the Divine created in its image.

Maybe then the Creator is not separate from the Tree of Life, and it becomes understandable why the ancients placed so much emphasis on worshipping this tree. A Creator taking the form of a Cosmic Axis of pure geometry brings us to the heart of the conflict between today’s established science and religion. In contrast to the towering pioneers of science, beginning with Kepler and even up to Einstein, today’s scientists are largely antireligious and are trying to cover up everything that may point to the existence of an intelligent design of the universe. The focus of today’s scientists is on measuring aspects of the material reality and denying the existence of everything else. Because the Creator is not by nature material, but pure geometry as in the model presented here, it should be obvious that the Creator’s existence will never be proved by such measurements. To say that the Divine cannot in any way be measured is the same thing as saying that it is indeed invisible.

Yet, obviously this does not mean that the Creator does not exist. What we can see through the new discoveries in cosmology is that indeed there is a pure geometry, which measurably influences physical reality and guides the evolution of the universe. If we identify this pure geometry with the Tree of Life, and in turn with God, we can make sense of reality and how the spiritual aspects of reality indeed are directly connected to the physical even if they are not the same. The Divine depends on material reality to manifest its creation, but it is never identical with that physical reality, and the physical reality would not have come into existence in the first place without the Divine. This may not be proof of the existence of God, as this may not even be pos-sible given the invisible nature of the Divine. Yet, it is a way of looking at how science and spirituality are related in a way where they can coexist and each has its place. Science and spirituality are not mutually exclusive but complementary. Meaningful science can only be produced with a spiritual understanding, but on the other hand without science spirituality may lose much of its foundation.