IS THE EARTH AN INDIVIDUAL OR CONSENSUS REALITY?

© Ian Lawton 2020

I am asking for help with a spiritual problem that is none to easy to explain, let alone resolve. Some of you may not be attracted to any sort of rational intellectualising of spiritual ideas, and I perfectly respect that. Others may fundamentally disagree with some of the base assumptions of my spiritual model – for example that consciousness underlies everything; that all it ever wants to do is expand by having different experiences; and that in simplistic terms it differentiates itself into various aggregations or ‘supersouls’, which then create myriads of different universes or holograms to ‘play’ in. But for those of you who are still reading you may have a crucial piece of the jigsaw that I simply don’t have yet, or at the very least you’re probably in possession of a bigger brain ;-) And if you can’t help but know someone else who might be able to, please share this email/post with them…

One of the three precepts of my model of ‘Supersoul Spirituality’ is that ‘everything is happening in the now’ i.e. ‘past’ and ‘future’ don’t really exist. You will all be perfectly familiar with this refrain but, in order that I can properly explain the nature of my problem, please bear with me while we briefly consider the popular analogies that best allow us to understand an idea that appears to contradict all our human perceptions and intuitions.

Perhaps the simplest one is that we’re in a giant computer game, in which all scenarios based on all possible decisions and actions have already been worked out and therefore already ‘exist’. However it’s the actual decisions, choices and actions that the player makes in each now-moment that decide which path they navigate through the game, or in our terms what experience we attract. This is all well and good as far as it goes.

An alternative is the analogy of a film reel in which all ‘past’ and ‘future’ scenes already exist as separate frames, but seem to give a sense of flow or continuity because of the speed at which they’re projected. Let us say that each of us is the lead actor in our own film and also the sole viewer of it. As humans we tend to be ‘method actors’, that is our awareness typically becomes totally identified with the dramas, highs and lows of our part. Yet we can equate our viewer to the ‘observer self’, who’s aware that it’s just a film, is fundamentally less caught up in the drama and can stand more remote from it. If as an actor we learn to identify more with our viewer self we can then see our life as just a role, a story, a play or a game – however we want to describe it. But we still only have an awareness of the ‘past’ and ‘present’ of the film. We might make some educated guesses, but we don’t know exactly what path our life will take in the ‘future’. The analogy then continues that our higher self or supersoul is like the projectionist who can lay the film reel out and see all the frames right through to the end, because its awareness lies outside of space-time.

This analogy is very useful in one sense, but again it can only take us so far because, of course, it implies a single set of predetermined ‘future’ frames on a single film reel. Whereas to simulate the true situation we’d have to conceptualise an infinite set of reels for each human life, each of which might contain the same set of ‘past’ frames (see below), but must at least cater for an almost infinitely variable set of ‘future’ ones. Each of us then has an almost infinitely variable set of probable and possible selves – almost because there will be diminishing returns to working out every single possible ‘future’ in the minutest detail, and more effort will be put into programming the most probable selves based on ‘past’ decisions than on increasingly less likely ones. It will then be our choices in each frame that decide which course we navigate through our collection of film reels, based on our thoughts and beliefs, and on the Law of Attraction. Of course this also means that if we really believed it we could instantly ‘jump’ from one reel to a completely different one and find ourself in a very different, perhaps more desirable, version of the film. But such discontinuities are probably rare because they would be very disconcerting to the human brain, so usually we manifest desired changes more slowly.

So far, so good. But what, then, of the interaction between different films or lives?

The Consensus-Reality Model

On the one hand if our reality is collectively created i.e. each other person is an independent consciousness who is interacting with us using their own free will, then all the films of all the actors interact and interweave in a breathtaking tapestry that still manages to always manifest the exact experience each actor has attracted to themselves. But if this is so we must surely conclude that the ‘past’, which has been collectively created by all the actors there have ever been on earth, must be fixed. In other words, at any given now-moment, all films for all actors would have a consistent ‘past’. That is not to say there may not be other versions of the earth game that are playing out differently, perhaps by its being deliberately frozen at given points and allowed to diverge in two or more different directions – for example in one version the dinosaurs get wiped out, in another they don’t. But even if that were the case I'd still contend that each of us as a ‘life personality’ or ‘soul probe’ would only be projected into one version of the game by our supersoul. In other words there still aren't multiple versions of ‘Ian Lawton’, there's just one who has my exact name, my exact set of physical and psychological characteristics, my exact parents, my exact birthplace and time, and so on – or my exact set of what I call ‘birth givens’. What is more there’s only one version of each of the people I’ve ever interacted with in this version of the game. There may be other versions of me in other versions of the earth game that are quite similar, but for simplicity's sake we can regard them as completely separate personalities or probes operating using their own free will in a separate environment and having a completely different experience.

This consensus-reality model is certainly the one I’ve always resonated with most, but there’s a problem with it – a big problem. Many sources of channelled and other spiritual wisdom seem to suggest that, precisely because everything is happening in the now, the apparent past is not fixed either – and that, for example, lives in other ‘past’ human eras are still ongoing. Since I started work on the supersoul model I’ve always admitted that this idea is incredibly hard for our mere human brains to understand, while trying to follow its implications as best I can. But for the first time recently, particularly while researching volume 3 of the Supersoul Series, Afterlife, I’ve been forced to think this aspect of the model through somewhat further than before – and I’ve hit the barrier described. But before I ask for your help to unravel this conundrum, let's consider an alternative that does seem to explain it.

The Individual-Reality Model

If we see each of our life films as being entirely separate from each other, then everyone else in our version of the film or game is just ‘our version’ of that person, who is primarily only reacting to us in each moment of now according to their fully pre-programmed set of all possible reactions in that moment. This allows us to be in an infinitely malleable film with infinite versions not just of the future but also of the past. It also makes it much easier for us to understand something else these wise sources say is fundamental – that our reality only acts as a mirror to reflect back our own actions, thoughts, beliefs and so on – whereas under the consensus model this alone is pretty mind-boggling. What is more it would also explain how supersouls can project aspects of themselves into different human eras all at the same time, just by choosing different entry points into different versions of the game that are forever being reprogrammed or evolving.

The first thing to say is that this individual-reality model is entirely different from Hugh Everett’s ‘multiple worlds’ interpretation of quantum theory. At its most logically extreme this postulates a new universe being created for every possible state of every possible quantum wave/particle. To me this has always seemed ridiculously simplistic and philosophically inelegant, not least because of the hugely diminishing returns of minutely differentiated universes if the primary aim of consciousness is to expand by gaining experience. Above all it doesn’t differentiate between potential realities and those that are actualised by the free-will choices of the participants, whereas the models we're considering here do.

More to the point, as we’ve seen the individual-reality model does seem to easily accommodate many of the concepts that the consensus-reality one struggles with. But for most of us it won’t resonate anywhere near as much. After all, who wants to think of their loved ones as not being genuinely independent entities in our reality, but as programmes that are only reacting to us without proper free will? Moreover there’s another problem with this model. How do we then explain the evidence that we have consistent experiences of these other individuals in the higher/afterlife planes – and a shared memory of our history together on earth? This seems to suggest they have an independent, free-will based existence and have shared – and continue to share – a collectively created or consensus reality with us.

The alternative to this latter conundrum is that these higher planes too just represent more layers of an individual-reality game. But not only is that an even more unpalatable thought, it also begs the question: just how far into the higher planes would such a game extend before we were genuinely interacting with other independent consciousnesses? Or would the whole thing effectively be just an individual illusion until we reconnect with our supersoul consciousness?

One final point. Of course a model that postulates that fundamentally we're all just aspects of one universal consciousness, and that any experience of apparent individuality is an illusion, doesn't face any of these conundrums. But, while I accept that there is a fundamental universality, I also believe in the holographic principle that there can be individuality at the same time. What is more I'd argue that there's a whole plethora of evidence to support the fact that consciousness deliberately differentiates itself into all sorts of individualised units at different levels of aggregation.

I fully appreciate that I may be missing something fundamental, and if so I’m sure someone will set me straight. What is more I realise that often the answer to any spiritual conundrum is ‘both... and’, in other words perhaps our reality shares characteristics of both the consensus and individual reality models. But if so I have yet to be able to get my head round how that can be so.