I first came across his ideas in the 70s, through a book, Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1970), by two American authors, Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder.

Reflecting somewhat the counterculture of the 60s and 70s, the authors were exploring psychic matters and occultism, and for that purpose they visited Soviet Russia, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia in the summer of 1968. As described in the back cover, “they reveal astonishing breakthroughs and key personalities spearheading exploration of man’s unknown powers” in laboratories from Prague to Moscow.

One place they stopped was the Pulkovo Observatory near St. Petersburg (then Leningrad), “the principal observatory of the USSR Academy of Sciences and the timekeeping Greenwich of Russia” (today The Central Astronomical Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences) to meet Dr. Kozyrev. They were going there to discuss “an amazing theory of time” developed by Kozyrev, whom the authors described as “one of the Soviet Union’s most renowned astrophysicists” (p. 157).

Kozyrev does deserve this praise, as he was only 17 when he published his first scientific paper. When he graduated in physics and mathematics from the University of Leningrad, he was only twenty. And by the age of twenty-eight, he had already won distinction as an astronomer and had taught at several colleges (p. 158).

He was brimming with new ideas and life was as good as he could possibly have wished it to be. Then the ax fell. In 1936 he was arrested in the Stalinists repressions and in 1937 he began eleven crushing years in a prison camp. … When he was at last rehabilitated and could return to astronomy, Kozyrev made a series of brilliant predictions about the Moon, Venus, and Mars. Much later, Soviet space probes proved him right. (p. 158)

Like many other geniuses throughout world history, his announcements were received with skepticism in the beginning. In 1958, for instance, he announced volcanic activity on the moon, which meant that there were vast natural resources to exploit. Scientists “classified him as an eccentric hunting for gas on the moon. They knew this was not possible.” But he was proven right when Dr. Harold Urey, a U.S. Nobel Prize winner, talked with him and NASA started the enormous “Moon Blink” project. Eventually, gas emissions were found on the moon.

Kozyrev was proposing a new theory when he said, “Time is a form of energy. It is to time’s properties that we should look in order to find the source that maintains the phenomenon of life in the world.” With all credit to his other findings, this theory on time may sound completely irrelevant and without basis to scientists today; but as mentioned in the beginning, the purpose of this review is not to confirm his theory, but to open up a long forgotten gateway for researchers studying time and ether.

Although approached with suspicion today, parapsychology studies peaked in the eastern bloc in the 1960s, which was the main reason the two American authors felt the need to travel overseas and spend three years researching their 450-page book. “Parapsychology, nonexistent just a decade before, was suddenly flourishing all over the USSR,” they wrote. When the authors looked beyond Iron Curtain politics, “behind the lace curtains of everyday Russia,” they began to come across “some very unusual material about life.”

“Soviet scientists were asking publicly, ‘What is man?’ Do we have unused, undreamed of potentials? Can parapsychology melt the barriers and create the supernormal human being? These were heady questions to read in Soviet publications.”

In 1966, the authors noted, the influential journal Science and Religion put out a special issue, No. 3, on current Russian telepathy research. Outstanding Soviets, including such notables as Dr. Nikolai Semyonov, a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry and Vice President of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, called for further scientific investigations of telepathy. It was in this time and context when Kozyrev’s research intensified and his speculative theory came into a form.

The authors noted that, according to some Soviet scientists (p. 159), ESP (extrasensory perception) “may involve an unknown form of energy,” which Kozyrev called “time,” in the telepathic transfer of “thought” instantly from one person to another.

“Time is the most important and most enigmatic property of nature. Time is not propagated like light waves; it appears immediately everywhere. The altered properties of a certain second of time will appear instantly everywhere at once, just as time is everywhere. Time links us all and all things in the universe,” Dr. Kozyrev told the authors in his high-ceilinged office at Pulkovo. The authors noted the following from their interview with Kozyrev:

Kozyrev’s “time” has a number of properties which he says can be studied in the scientist’s lab. He has found, for instance, that this “X” energy, or “time,” is denser near the receiver of an action and thinner near the sender. He showed us some of the instruments he has devised to chart this unusual effect. The basic equipment includes precision gyroscopes, asymmetrical pendulums, and torsion balances. The instruments, when set up in a complex arrangement, react showing a change in time density near a mechanical action (like stretching elastic) or a chemical action (like burning sugar).

This is the gist of what happens in one of the more simple experiments: a long elastic is stretched by a machine. You can think of this elastic as having two poles. The “pull” or cause end and the “stretch” or effect end. When the elastic is stretched, the registering equipment, consisting mainly of an asymmetrical pendulum made with a gyroscope, arcs toward the effect pole of the elastic. This deflection is imperceptible to the eye, but easily registered on the sensitive instruments. It is a highly important effect. It shows there has been an increase in the intensity of time, according to Dr. Kozyrev. “This has nothing to do with force fields. We shielded and calculated out any possible influence of electrostatic or any other force.” Considering Kozyrev’s rarified caliber as a scientist, he probably knows what he is talking about.

Kozyrev’s instruments also showed a thinning of time near the “cause” end of the elastic, and this was possible even when the “cause-effect” equipment was shielded by a wall one yard thick: “It reacts even through iron tubes.” Chemical cause-effect, like burning sugar, also showed the change in time density. “We postulate,” Dr. Kozyrev said, “that time is thin around the cause and dense around the effect.”

According to the authors, “what Dr. Kozyrev has found in these tests can be called PK (psychokinesis),” for the chemical events acted on the gyroscope pendulum at a distance and without the use of any known force. Dr. Kozyrev would say that “time density” brought on this startling action at a distance. PK is usually considered not as matter affecting matter from a distance, but as a mind affecting matter. The authors asked Kozyrev whether thought might have any effect on this time density. “Yes,” Dr. Kozyrev replied. “Thought definitely affects the reaction. When I purposefully think of poetry or something emotional during the test, the equipment registers more of a change than when I think of mathematical calculations. Our thoughts may change the density of time.”

“Would the density of time, then, have something to do with telepathy?” asked the authors.

“Telepathy always depends on the density of time. Time would be thin near the sender of the thought and denser around the receiver. We’ve already done tests in our lab to try to artificially change the density of time. When we can make time dense at will, we can make telepathy happen when we want it,” Dr. Kozyrev feels.

What else affects the density of time? Thunderstorms, the weather, the change of season, the activity of growing things, gravity, and density of matter have an effect on time density, which lingers longer in some substances than in others. “It remains twice as long in aluminum as in lead and five times longer in wood than in lead” (p. 162).

Another characteristic of the energy Kozyrev called “time” is that it has a flow pattern, according to his findings:

Dr. Kozyrev thought about all living organisms-animals, plants, people. Our right and left sides are not mirror images. More of the heart is on the left than the right side. Microbes produce colonies of a spiral structure. Protoplasm, the basic building block of life, is not symmetrical either. Asymmetry is a basic property of life. This can’t be a chance thing, Dr. Kozyrev thought. … Perhaps the energy of “time” flows in this pattern. If so, Dr. Kozyrev figured, he could see it and measure it in a rotating body like a gyroscope. Altering the time pattern in a rotating system should add or subtract energy.

After years of careful experiments, Dr. Kozyrev and his colleagues found that in a left-hand rotating system the time flow is positive-it adds energy. In a right-hand system the time flow is negative. … In Dr. Kozyrev’s view our world is a left-hand system and it has a positive time flow that adds energy to our universe.

Time not only has a pattern of flow, says Dr. Kozyrev, but also a rate of flow. He calls “the rate of flow” the difference between cause and effect. “As the rate of the time flow through a substance changes, weight is lost,” Dr. Kozyrev told us. “It means that ‘levitation’ is a perfectly practical possibility.” (p. 163)

Time or ether?

Time is not matter. According to Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, “time is like an aspect or a ‘ribbon’ of motion” (The Thirty-First Word, p. 591). That is, time is not possible without motion. I argue that what Kozyrev thought he discovered was not time, but perhaps had to with what is called ether, an element which is assumed by some cosmologists to be the essence of all existence, but which is also disregarded by many scientists today. Bediuzzaman is one of those scholars who referenced ether in his work. In his partial Qur’anic exegesis, The Sign of Miraculousness (Isharat al-I’jaz first published in 1914), Bediuzzaman explained the verse (Hud 11:7) as follows:

… the verse “the heavens and the earth were at first one piece, and then We parted them as separate entities”(21:30) indicates that the earth and the solar system were a sort of dough kneaded by the hand of power out of a simple substance; I mean ether, which compared with beings is a fluid substance that passes through and among them. The verse “His Supreme Throne was upon the water”(11:7) alludes to this matter, which resembles water. After its creation, the ether received the Maker’s first manifestation giving existence; that is, He created the ether, then He made it into the subatomic particles (jawâhir farda) … (Isharat al-I’jaz, pp. 254)

For Bediuzzaman, ether was something like an interface upon which all acts of God were displayed:

… being an extremely subtle, fine, obedient and subjugated page for the All-Majestic Maker’s acts, being a means for the transmission of His commands, being an extremely delicate veil for the execution of His decrees, being refined ink for His writing, being a finest raiment to clothe His acts of creation, being a fundamental component in His artifacts and a field in which to sow His seeds, ether acts as a mirror for the manifestations of the Lordship of God. (The Thirtieth Gleam, p. 477)

Bediuzzaman also referred to “ether” when he said “refined matter” in the following quote: “Such subtle and refined matters as light, electricity, and heat point to the existence of a more subtle and refined matter that fills space” (The ThirtyFirst Word, p. 589).

The observations and findings of Kozyrev, though in desperate need of endorsement by objective scientific criteria, sound, from how the American authors revealed in their interview, as if referring to this mysterious subtle matter called “ether” rather than “time.”

Conclusion

The authors of this once popular book wrote in the Prologue that they “would have to be megalomaniacs to think that scores of highly reputable scientists from centers across the Soviet Union and the satellite countries all conspired to publish data for a decade and to bluff through interviews” to impress them when they happened to meet them. The authors further noted that “whether communist observations and theories about psychic happenings are right or not, can only be determined by further investigations East and West.”

Let us conclude with the following quote from the Prologue: “As Vladimir Mutshall wrote of current Soviet telepathy research in the American Foreign Science bulletin, Vol. 4, No. 8, ‘If the Russian reports are even partly true, and if mind-to-mind thought transference can be used for such things as interplanetary communications or the guiding of interplanetary spacecraft, the reports will obviously have overwhelming significance.'”

The main reason I have extensively quoted from this book is not to confirm any of the findings, but to encourage scientists to conduct further research into the essence of matter without completely disregarding phenomena like ether.

In this work we study a verse from the Qur’an, the 47th verse of the Sura al-Dhariyat (The Winds that Scatter), under the light of new discoveries in the field of astrophysics. We note that recent evidence about the accelerating expansion of the universe is also strongly consistent with this verse, although this has shocked the scientific community. In the last part of the article, we discuss possible relations of “metaphysical dimensions” and the concept of “the seven layers” with the word “sama” (translated in to English as “heaven”) as mentioned in the verse.

The existence of the universe is perhaps one of the greatest mysteries in science and philosophy. No convincing argument has been ever put forward that has enabled us to understand this amazing event, not since the beginning of modern science. Religions like Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, on the other hand, explain that the Creator built our robust universe directly out of physical nothingness, independent of any cause. Therefore, the initial creation of such universe would be impossible to explain physically (M. F. Gulen, from his conference on “Evolution and reality”).

In his translation of the relevant verse, S. Yildirim has noted that God keeps the universe expanding and He will continue to do so. Yildirim attributes two meanings to the word musiun in the verse; the first is the owner of great power, strength and wealth; the second is one who expands. Thus, it should not be a surprise to learn that this verse is indeed describing a continually-expanding universe. This might further lead Muslims to think that the Creator has not left the universe unattended after the Big Bang, but rather it is He who has kept creating and expanding it.

In the 1920’s a discovery was made that completely changed our perception of space. It was discovered that distant stars depart from the solar system and leave us even more and more alone in dark space. Then, Fr. Georges-Henri Lemaître, a Belgian astrophysicist, mathematician, and Catholic priest, proposed the idea of the expanding universe. Despite its finite size, it was believed that the universe was expanding.

We can explain this fact simply by an analogy. Think of a toy balloon with spots on it. Mark one of those spots and inflate the balloon. As we inflate it, we observe that all other spots on the surface of the balloon move away from the marked one. So, if we replace the balloon with our universe, the spots will be the stars and planets. If the universe is expanding indeed, then we expect them to be moving away from each other. In other words, the distances between heavenly bodies must be increasing.

Unfortunately, we don’t have a gigantic ruler to measure such immense distances. However, there are other means, such as measuring wave frequencies. Consider the following analogy: Someone throws one ball every second toward a target. Assume that balls travel with constant velocity. If the thrower is stationary, the target will receive one ball every second. However, if the thrower is moving towards the target, it will receive balls more frequently because the balls will be less spaced out. The converse is true if the thrower is moving away from the target. So it is actually the wavelength which is affected; as a consequence, the perceived frequency is also affected. That is, the distances between the waves emitted by objects moving away from us (wavelength) must be increasing, so the frequency decreasing. Likewise, think of an ambulance siren coming towards you and going away from you. It is a good example showing that while an acoustic source that is approaching us emits a higher frequency, the same source radiates lower frequency when going away from us. In physics this is known as the Doppler effect.

Red shift

This phenomenon does not only occur with sound waves, but also with electromagnetic waves. When we think of the spectrum of light, violet at one end has the shortest wavelength and red at the other end has the longest wavelength of visible light. So, any wave of light shifting toward red means the source is moving away from us. It has been determined that the frequency of light emitted by the elements within distant stars shift to a lower frequency, which is called a red shift.

It is this shift that makes astrophysicists think that the universe is expanding. One mustn’t be confused by red shift. This terminology is just used to explain in what direction the frequency is actually shifting on the spectrum. Those signals captured from distant stars have a much smaller frequency (much higher wavelength) than that of red light and they are indeed in the microwave regime and shifting to even much smaller frequency radio waves.

In 2002, an article presenting new evidence of the accelerating expansion of the universe was published by the Royal Astronomical Society. It was not so long ago, only five years, that general opinion concurred with a decelerating expansion. However, the first evidence found by two astronomers in that year led us into a universe that expands in an accelerating fashion, contrary to previous views. This result was absolutely unexpected, because many scientists believed that expansion would slow down due to gravity. Another interesting fact is that if space were to cease expanding, this would be in contradiction to the above verse. God, however, by never allowing this to happen, shows how futile the actions of those who deny His verses are and how extensive His power is, as well as how purposefully He creates.

Dark energy

The groups who worked in the above study figured out, from the brightness of supernovas in distant galaxies, that the universe must expand more and more in the future due to a peculiar dark energy within it. The concept of dark energy was first postulated by Einstein, who named it the “cosmological constant.” However, since this did not fit in well with his theory of general relativity, he withdrew it and said that it was a scientific blunder. Since then, dark energy has had a rather controversial history.

A team of 27 astronomers, directed by Professor Efstathiou of Cambridge University, proposed strong evidence supporting the existence of dark matter, based on completely novel techniques. Their results, which were consistent with previous supernovas, showed that the universe is indeed full of dark matter. Professor Efstathiou thinks that the explanation of dark energy might include additional dimensions like creation (Big Bang) as well. Fr. Lemaître also proposed the expanding universe theory at an opportune time since Edwin Hubble would soon release his red shift observations that strongly supported an expanding universe and, consequently, the Big Bang theory. Here, the Big Bang is seen as the beginning of a continuous expansion.

The verse seems to tell us miraculously that the expansion of the universe will not cease, despite our limited knowledge of the physical reason for its acceleration.

The Hubble Telescope

Another article, published in Nature, presents us the first and deepest picture of space taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. This caused the astronomers to compete in solving the mysteries of the arts of God. The picture, also known as the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, was broadcasted and published in various programs and journals. It has not only shown us the farthest stars of the universe, but the youngest as well. It was very difficult to detect such weak light with the former technology. This picture reveals the embryonic universe, with an age of only 500 million years old. Estimated age of the universe is 13-14 billion years. Three physicists from American Natural History Museum in New York started a competition to publish an article on the Ultra Deep Field picture after the data was disclosed. They hope to answer many questions about the past and future universe. A group at the Stony Brook University, New York, directed by Kenneth Lanzetta, analysed the embryonic samples in the picture to try to discover when various galaxies had been born and how they had evolved. Two other groups are studying the motions of stars and galaxies, as the picture is a result of data collected over a month.

Having looked at the expansion of universe under the light of recent discoveries, now we turn our attention to two other arguments that could be relevant to expansion. Namely, ether (a substance which it is believed fills up the vast universe and which is the ultimate building block of the space), and the seven-layer-universe.

Despite the Michelson-Morley experiment, which argued against theory of luminiferous ether, the propagation of electric, light, or heat in space shows the existence of a substance through which they flow. The Michelson-Morley experiment is nothing more than just a test of the non-existence of certain qualities of ether. For example, in order to show the existence of photons, of which light is made up, we cannot go beyond showing the features of photons. In other words, depending on how we have defined its qualities, we can observe different aspects in the photon, ether, or anything else. In fact, even today, we don’t really know what a photon really is, although we observe its affects every day. In short, it is not possible to show the non-existence of phenomena that cannot be absolutely defined. Instead, we can only test the existence of the properties that we have defined and attributed to them, and thus we better understand their nature of existence in the context of those pre-defined qualities. Hence, the existence of ether is still controversial and needs more thorough research.

Seven layers

Regarding the seven-layer-universe, on the other hand, how is it possible for ether to manifest itself in seven heavens? It may be that these seven layers are not all posed above our heads, but rather that they may be found one with another. The universe is composed of many systems and networks that are the building blocks of their counterparts on larger scales. Each system is governed by laws, which differ slightly from one another. Inside the atom there exists a proton with its unique organization and in a proton we find quarks. For example, communication between protons and electrons is mediated by the electromagnetic force, while the quarks inside the protons communicate via the strong force. These interleaved circles show us that the universe is indeed composed of numerous layers.

We may use these layers for the metaphysical world as well. The human being is not only composed of matter, but also has a mind, a soul, and intelligence. Although these components are accepted as existing by all, their exact nature has not yet been explained by positive sciences.

It seems that the universe is composed of at least two different worlds: The material world (physical) and the immaterial (metaphysical) world. Are these two worlds completely separate, or do they have some features in common? In fact, the existence of humanity might prove to be this common set. But, it may also be true for the universe itself. Nursi states that the distant galaxies, stars and planets are not empty, but home to many spirits and angels who have their own consciences. Thus, one can say that despite the boundaries which separate these two worlds, such as different numbers of temporal and spatial dimensions, they constitute a whole, the Universe. The interaction between them will never fail as long as the universe exists.

The existence of two separate worlds is not that difficult to believe, but there is more:

It is He Who (prepared the earth for your life before He gave you life, and) created all that is in the world for you (in order to create you – the human species – and make the earth suitable for your life); then He directed (His Knowledge, Will, Power, and Favor) to the heaven, and formed it into seven heavens. He has full knowledge of everything. (Baqara 2:29)

The Qur’an calls the heaven where the sun, moon and stars are the lowest heaven or the heaven of the world (Mulk 67:5). The other six heavens may be the heavens of the worlds of the Hereafter.1 We are not sure whether this seven-layer heavens can only be attributed to the physical universe. It might be able to apply to the universe as a whole, with its all seen and unseen layers as well. Even the worlds of angels and spirits may be expanding in accordance with the laws therein, to show how the power and the wealth of God are comprehended in those worlds as well. Although our Earth is finite, the expansion may not be restricted to our finite world, but it may continue in infinite worlds as well.

It is possible that the space being filled with ether has an important role in paving the orbits of planets or stars, as well as other heavenly bodies. We believe that future studies on dark matter, ether, and string theory will help us to better understand the expansion process of the universe.

Note

1. What the Qur’an means by seven heavens has been interpreted in different ways. For further information see Unal, 2006, p. 19.

References

• Ünal, Ali, The Qur’an with Annotated Interpretation in Modern English, The Light, Inc., New Jersey: 2006.
• Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 330, 21 (2002).
• Nursi, S., The Words, The Light, Inc., Istanbul: 2005.