An Armchair Exploration of the Universe: How a Contracting Universe Could Create Love from Chaos

By Jake Lyron

Award winning philosopher Jake Lyron explores the origins of the Universe and how a contracting Universe theory could explain the astronomical observations. He goes on to look at how the contracting/expanding Universe creates a 'force' which drives evolution along, creating all life and eventually the phenomenon of love. The book takes in a revision of the Big Bang Theory, entropy, genetic evolution, the forces of nature, Taoist mysticism, how love is a part of a genetically cooperative civilisation and how Homo sapiens is evolving away from sociopathy of the selfish gene to live by the 'cooperative gene'. Ultimately Lyron reveals 'the force' which was part of Taoist lore and influenced George Lucas in his Star Wars films.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jake Lyron
• Release date: Jan 8, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311404077

Jake Lyron

Jake is an activist for a sane world. His book "The Shrink from Planet Zob: Psychiatry for a Mad World" earned him a Mental Health Hero Award from leading mental health organisations for his contribution to the field. He publishes books which illuminate, creating clarity on reality expounding what Jake calls 'the spirituality of reality', a spirituality which makes sense from a scientific as well as a spiritual perspective. To this end he has also written about his new theory of the Holy Grail symbol in his book "The Holy Grail's Lost Meaning: Symbol of Receptiveness to Truth and Love". Google his author name to find all of the books he has published or find them on this, his Smashwords profile page.

Book preview

An Armchair Exploration of the Universe:

How a Contracting Universe Could Create Love

From Chaos

Jake Lyron

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Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2014 Jake Lyron.

The right of Jake Lyron to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988 (UK Law).

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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Contents

Introduction

In the Beginning

Gravity and Love

The Force

Appeal

More By Jake Lyron

Introduction

Almost everything we have seen in the Universe has never been visited. Think about it. All those billions of galaxies each containing billions of stars, most of the planets in our own solar system, the inside of the Earth, life which existed many millions of years ago, most of what you know about our world which you personally have never visited. Almost all of the known Universe has, as yet, never been visited. So there is hope for mortals like us.

This is a brief exploration of, quite literally, the Universe which you can embark on without leaving your armchair. With some thought and remote observations we can penetrate back in time billions of years, cross galaxies and explore the fascinating common ground between science and faith. To paraphrase the line from Star Trek - to boldly think where no one has thunk before. The only limits are in the mind.

First then the preparation. We cannot take this journey if the mind is not prepared for it. Because the mind can sometimes be unwilling to explore the vastness of the cosmos. You might call that linear thinking, obstinacy, ignorance or foolishness. Sometimes when we are faced with a new way of thinking which can expand our mental horizons, we can impose on ourselves illusory limitations.

Here’s a for instance. The astronomers Copernicus and Galileo made observations of the planets in the night sky, many hundreds of years ago. Being quite bright chaps, they figured out that the planets and our own Earth followed paths which clearly showed they revolved around the sun. That meant the sun did not orbit around the Earth, contrary to religious belief at that time. It was held by the Catholic Church that God had made the Earth so important that it was at the centre of everything, and so the Sun must orbit the Earth. Of course, we know now that is not true. But when Galileo published his theories about a heliocentric solar system (with the Sun at the centre), the Church was outraged. They ordered Galileo to renounce his findings and with the Spanish Inquisition placed him under house arrest for the remaining years of his life for teaching what they believed to be a heresy.

We can see now that the Catholic Church was wrong, and it took until 1992 for Pope John Paul II to apologise for the Church’s persecution of Galileo.

This kind of thinking is extremely common. The Catholics imposed on themselves a limitation which existed solely in their minds. With the development of telescopes the practical limitations to observing planets was steadily removed, Galileo’s exploration of the Universe was expanding out there, off the limits of our own Earth. So practically, there was no limitation on this issue, the limit was in the mind.

It comes down to narcissism. Galileo’s findings showed the Church to be foolish in not understanding reality. That’s a fact. Inside all of us is a genetic drive to appear ‘cool’ to others. Psychologists refer to it as social desirability; I call it the desire for social esteem. In order to survive in the world we must get along with our fellow humans. We need them to work with us so we can survive. We need them to buy our products, or sell us theirs, we sometimes need their help with some project and we will need to find a partner if we are to reproduce. But people usually only strike such cooperative deals with people they like or trust. So we have to get people to like or trust us; we must set out on a campaign to gain social esteem. For the narcissist, this craving for social esteem, or ‘coolness’ is paramount. At all costs they must get others to think they are wise, talented, sexy and so on. They cannot afford to appear foolish because then the esteem slips and others may not wish to strike cooperative deals with them.

But for the narcissist, social esteem is more important than practical reality, and this was the case for the Catholic Church. They had to appear to be wise, even though in reality they were being very foolish. Narcissism is all about style over substance. It is a public image campaign. They desire to look cool even if they have irrational beliefs.

A good example of a narcissist is the Emperor from the story The Emperor’s New Clothes. In that story, the fraudster sells the Emperor some invisible, and in fact non-existent, new clothes. He tells the Emperor that the clothes are so fine that only a fool cannot see them. Not wishing to appear to be a fool, the Emperor claims he can indeed see them and promptly parades around the town as naked as the day he was born. Because he was too concerned with social esteem, he ignored the fact that in reality he was doing something very foolish.

This is the kind of illusory limitation which stands in the way of our exploration of the Universe. So if we are to travel as far as we can in our