Any scientist who thinks about it carefully, even one totally committed to the materialistic, deterministic, probabilistic model of explanation, has got to have some trouble with the idea that everything in the physical Universe is created out of nothing every instant and dissolves into nothing every instant. Occam’s razor doesn’t have to be very sharp at all to get rid of that improbable and complicated assumption.
The much simpler alternative for understanding the physical space/time Universe moving at speeds slower than the speed of light is to accept that physical time and space are relative. That means that the past is a place that we have already visited, but continues to exist even though we aren’t there anymore. The future is a place that already exists even though we haven’t visited it yet.
However, the future is clearly different from the past. Our experience of the future is that there are a number of possibilities that we can choose from. We make our choices in the present. The past is the fixed result of whatever choices we have made and continue to make.
Alternative Universes: According to one of the more popular current cosmologies, there are many alternative Universes (perhaps an infinite number) at the cosmological level of reality and at the quantum level of reality. If we accept that this is true, then it also makes sense for alternative Universes to exist at our human species level of reality as well. The present can be seen as a succession of instants in which we choose from among the alternative futures available to us and, thereby, we establish a fixed past that is the path through those alternative Universes that we have lived.
All of the alternative Universes exist in the future, in the present, and in the past. In our succession of presents, we simply select one alternative future from the alternative futures available to us, actualize it in the present, and then pass it on to our next present and all the next presents that constitute our future as the one alternative that we lived, surrounded by all the ones we didn’t live.
The range of alternative futures that we can access is limited by the structure of our consciousness and by our psycho/physical reality. I can’t be paying attention to my breathing with a useful visualization while I’m typing, if I haven’t expanded my awareness and learned how to do all that at the same time. Right now, I could be in many different places in Oakland California, doing many different things, but I can’t be in New York without pursuing a specific track of instants that are involved to get there.
We choose among alternative futures in each instant, but these instants combine to make up the larger scale alternative futures that we embrace to create the paths that our lives take. And all instants are not created equal. The choices we make in some instants essentially are choices among paths rather than just a choice on a path.
Choosing to get married or take a particular job are, obviously, choices of a different order than choosing what to have for breakfast, even though the same process of choosing among alternative futures exists in both cases. As we make our choices, the range of choices among alternative futures on a path or among paths evolves, closing some doors and opening others.
The Alternative Future We Want Already Exists: So, what this means is that the alternative future that we want for ourselves and our species and our planet already exists in a place along the continuum of time that we haven’t reached yet. From the perspective of that alternative future, a fully safe, sustainable, resilient Earth inhabited by a healthy, prosperous, peaceful species already exists in potentia.
Our choices help to bring a planetary alternative future into existence. However all the other alternative futures also exist and many people are making choices that tend to manifest ones we don’t want.
The best way to make the future we want fully real in our present and our past is to envision it powerfully and exemplify it effectively. Through consciousness practices, we can strengthen our ability to bring about the planetary alternative future we want and need. We can help get to it by Meditating on it with Mantra and Visualization Meditations. We can even catch true glimpses of it in our Vision Meditations in ways that can offer us guidance.
Consciousness practices can strengthen our ability to manifest a coherent Self and acquire the knowledge and take the actions that are needed. Every time we visualize the planetary alternative future we are seeking and meditate on it and learn more about it and act to exemplify it, we make the path to this planetary alternative future easier to follow and we strengthen our ability to travel that path. The more of us that do this together, and the more powerful those of us who do this are, the stronger, more powerful, and more effective we become and the more powerful the Movement for Planetary Transformation becomes.
However, inner action is certainly not enough. We also have to build the communities, and the businesses, and the political organizations, and the cultural expressions that are each examples of Love and Justice and of the Great Transformation. And we have to link those examples together to form the new culture and the new society and the new politics and the new economy that are the different aspects of the Great Transformation.
As such, we are the individual agents in accomplishing the Great Transformation needed now to perfect human life and create a heaven on Earth so that people learn to live in harmony with themselves, each other, and the Earth. This will create a foundation for us to create a new and wonderful reality here on Earth and to expand beyond the Earth.
