Everything is destined for a galactic core, according to Terence Witt, author of the textbook “Our Undiscovered Universe.” In most cases, this is a return journey, according to Witt, who, like Lao Tzu, asserts that all manifestation springs from an infinite and eternal nothingness and that the sum of all of all that exists is zero. In such a reality, galaxies annihilate as much stuff as they create and do so via a cyclical process. In such a reality, there is no beginning or end, simply infinity in four dimensions, according to Witt.

Let’s look at the cycle of creation and destruction that all of manifestation takes and that takes all of manifestation repeatedly through galactic cores.

All matter is energy condensed. And all matter is destined for its local galactic core where it will be recycled and shot back out into the cosmos. Here is how it works, according to Witt: “First, hydrogen fuses (in stellar ovens), producing compound nuclei and light. Next light loses energy to the Cosmic Microwave Background through microwave emission, driven by gravitationally induced photon expansion. Galactic halos capture CMB energy via deep space electrical currents. Those currents carry their captured energy through galactic disks to galactic cores. Electrical energy supplied to the galactic cores disassociates compound nuclei to produce hydrogen.” That hydrogen then travels outwards along the same corridors along which the aforementioned electrical currents transported CMB to the galactic cores. Hydrogen becomes fuel for the stellar furnaces, mentioned in the first step of the cycle.

To generalize, all matter cycles through galactic cores repeatedly ad infinitum. The tao of matter is away from the core as some light and mostly hydrogen, through a star and on outward again as light, and then back again to the core as relatively weak microwave energy.

In his book, Witt puts into the language of physics the definition of reality as it was laid out by the mystics and shamans of yore. For example, the Mayans believed that all manifest was borne of the great egg at the crossroads in the sky, which was the core of the Milky Way, our galaxy. They chiseled in stone and passed down generation to generation tales that suggest gods, men and higher intelligence rode a snake along a corridor through the cosmos to Earth and that on certain dates, when the cosmos took on a certain pattern, the conveyance of creation from the galactic core was distilled and purified. Perhaps because it was difficult to create a hieroglyph or an ideogram for a photon’s trajectory or for a gamma ray, they depicted their gods riding snakes. Snakes hiss, which is the sound the core makes when it spews out various energy forms, according to William Henry in his book “2012: The Healing Sun Code,” published by Scala Dei, an esoteric fraternity whose sun-wheel logo appears borrowed from the Buddhists.

Writes Henry, “During the early 1960’s astronomers began to realize that the massive object that forms the core of our Milky Way Galaxy periodically becomes active. The cores of all spiral galaxies cycle through a similar phase. During its active period, our galactic core is a cauldron of chaos. It spews out fierce quasar-like barrages of cosmic rays, with a total energy output equal to hundreds of thousands of supernova explosions.”

To a radio telescope, such an outpouring sounds like the hissing of a snake. And the shape of a gamma ray or the trajectory of a photon would perhaps appear like a writhing snake flying through the cosmos.

The Mayans knew that something quite godlike that was the origin of much of manifestation and the trends in the local cosmos was an egg-like bulge that is the core of the home galaxy. But from where did they learn this and why was the story so codified, what with snakes and winged serpents, a cosmic egg, and a crossroads in the sky?

Other truths that Witt articulated were codified in religious legends of yore. The Bhagavad-Gita, a brief accounting for reality given to Arjuna by Krisna prior to the battle of Kuruksetra, describes the individual’s experience on the “return” to “Godhead.” Foremost proponent of the Krsna Consciousness Movement, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada elaborates in the Gita on the teachings of Krsna. Says Prabhupada, everyone eventually returns to the “Godhead.” On the way there, many will incarnate on various planets of either greater or lesser proximity to the Godhead, the home planet of Krsna, Krsnaloka. “Men of small intelligence worship the demigods, and their fruits are limited and temporary. Those who worship the demigods (upon death) go to the planets of the demigods, but my devotees ultimately go to My supreme planet (Krsnaloka)” (7.24).

Meanwhile, according to Lao Tzu, author of the Tao Te Ching and the Hua Hu Ching, “the way of the Tao” “is return.”

Return is cooked into existence one way or another, whether our energy returns to the galactic core or all of manifestation eventually returns to the infinite and eternal nothingness.

Take, for example, the course of the planet Earth.

Earth is 10 billion years old and moving slowly, nine kilometers per second, towards the core of the Milky Way. It will take us four billion years to get there, according to Witt.

“The universe’s material appears to be on the order of 12-18 billion years old because this is the time required for galaxies to recycle it through their cores. … The time it takes to fall through the luminous portion of our galaxy’s disk is about 16 billion years. At its current rate of descent, our solar system will be in the Milky Way’s core region in less than four billion years.

Even if you were to reincarnate here, on Earth -- and according to Prabhupada you could reincarnate as a ghost (perhaps on a dead planet) – you would eventually return to the core, to the center of the galaxy, to the great cosmic egg that births all of creation.

Ultimately what Witt has accomplished with “Our Undiscovered Universe” is to translate the myths of yore into the language of physics, which is to say to recodify it. This brings us to the question of why, if the sages and shamans, priests and astrologers of yore knew the true nature of reality, was it codified as it was in hieroglyphics and cartoony ideograms hammered into the walls of monuments and buildings of all the pyramid-building cultures, the Sumerians, Egyptians, ancient Chinese and Mesoamericans?

Researcher J.A. Chapin writes in his book “Genesis: 2012” that such hieroglyphics encapsulating legends that are codified keys to reality indicate the existence of a highly advanced civilization that apparently was wiped out in a cataclysm of astronomical proportions. Chapin argues that the survivors of such a cataclysm, one that for example may have inundated much of the inhabited parts of the Earth, would have seen all of the products and fruits of their advances in astronomy and technology wiped out. Even language itself would be set back and only the words used by the survivors, reduced to a tribal, hunter-gatherer lifestyle, would continue to be used and thus survive. With all literature and writing utensils destroyed or limited in number, with the factories that produced books and computers destroyed, with the scientists who had uncovered universal truths dead, those carrying the advanced knowledge of this antediluvian civilization would have to figure out how to pass on their knowledge to future generations, generations with the technology and the wisdom to properly use the knowledge, generations that may be millennia away. The information would have to be carved in stone because that was the most readily available medium and because stone erodes slower than mankind learns. And it would have to be codified in stories simple enough that they can be handed down generation to generation to generation and still maintain their core messages even with the attrition that arises through the use of creative liberty to augment what remains after standard memory loss.