  All measurements are comparisons. The only physically accessible degrees of
freedom (DOFs) are dimensionless ratios. The objective description of the
universe as a whole thus predicts only how these ratios change collectively as
one of them is changed. Here we develop a description for classical Bianchi IX
cosmology implementing these relational principles. The objective evolution
decouples from the volume and its expansion degree of freedom. We use the
relational description to investigate both vacuum dominated and quiescent
Bianchi IX cosmologies. In the vacuum dominated case the relational dynamical
system predicts an infinite amount of change of the relational DOFs, in
accordance with the well known chaotic behaviour of Bianchi IX. In the
quiescent case the relational dynamical system evolves uniquely though the
point where the decoupled scale DOFs predict the big bang/crunch. This is a
non-trivial prediction of the relational description; the big bang/crunch is
not the end of physics - it is instead a regular point of the relational
evolution. Describing our solutions as spacetimes that satisfy Einstein's
equations, we find that the relational dynamical system predicts two singular
solutions of GR that are connected at the hypersurface of the singularity such
that relational DOFs are continuous and the orientation of the spatial frame is
inverted.
