REALITY AND TIME

A Rational Spiritualist View of Creating our own Reality, Multiple Realities and the Nature of Time

© Ian Lawton 2005

Ideas such as that we create our own reality, that multiple realities exist, and that time does not really exist, have been promulgated by many spiritual, philosophical and now scientific commentators for a long time. But I believe it is essential that they should be qualified by placing them in their proper Rational Spiritual context.

Creating Our Own Reality

On the face of it we might expect Rational Spirituality to endorse the idea that we create our own reality. After all, its first precept is that the physical world is only an illusion, because modern theoretical physics shows there are no 'fundamental building blocks of matter', instead only packets of energy or quanta whose properties are to some extent determined by their observer. And its sixth precept discusses how we choose and plan our incarnate lives in advance.¹

Indeed, to a large extent Rational Spirituality does support this proposition. It certainly accepts that we should concentrate on desired outcomes by visualisation and other meditative techniques. But there is a problem with the full-on proposition that we can create any reality we like at any time.

To trivialize this somewhat let us assume that, by focussed visualisation before you take a car journey through a town, you can ensure that all the lights will be on green. There is every reason to suspect that the power of directed thought or assumption in this type of relatively trivial situation will be successful. But what, we might ask, would happen if two equally adept visualisers were to try this exercise at the same time, but coming from conflicting directions? If, as I will discuss in the next section, there is a 'unique' physical reality that we are all involved in creating as a collective and not just an individual experience, then when the two people involved in the traffic light exercise come up against each other only one could obtain their desired outcome, while the other would be thwarted.

To take the discussion onto a less trivial but more personal plane, I have been aware of the power of directed thought and intention for a long time, and have tried to put it into practice on many occasions. When it comes to really important matters relating to my personal or work life, I have on occasion directed my thoughts and imagination to a desired outcome over prolonged periods of time and using all the methods at my disposal – including pre-sleep visualization, meditation, conscious mantra chanting and so on. And, guess what? Sometimes I have eventually achieved at least a part of the outcome I desired – although rarely straightaway, and often only after months or even years of concerted effort. But, by the same token, just as many times I have been thwarted. Sometimes the outcome I previously desired has become obsolete and is no longer of concern, but on other issues the outcome I so fervently desire has not happened yet, although it may still, possibly in some unexpected way that I have not as yet envisaged.

Perhaps I am just not very good at this sort of thing yet. Or perhaps some of my desires might have been thwarted by the conflicting desires of others on a more collective level. But, far more than this, Rational Spirituality suggests that we cannot create all the outcomes we consciously desire at will because of karma. So on the one hand, and quite simply, one of the specific lessons that any of us might have set ourselves to learn in this life, during the planning stage, is to cope with disappointment. On the other, we might consciously desire something that is completely at odds with the life plan we gave ourselves. Now, that plan is not predestined, and we do have the power and choice to change it as we go along in incarnate life. But interlife regression evidence suggests that our own higher selves, or spirit guides, might sometimes provide little prompts to help us to take a particular course of action that would help us to follow some element of our life plan.² So why should they not sometimes intervene a little to prevent us from doing something that we might think is really important at that time on a conscious level, but which they can see from a higher perspective is less than ideal? I suspect that they would not do this ad infinitum, because that really would remove an element of personal choice, which is sacrosanct to a Rational Spiritual worldview. But I am pretty sure that they might attempt to subtly influence events so that, at least for a period of time, they did their best to divert any of us from our currently desired but ultimately less than ideal path, especially if it concerned something of importance not just to ourselves but also on a more collective level. By the same token, again on a far simpler level, the fact that our own desired but unplanned outcome might conflict with a planned outcome of someone else might be more than enough to thwart it under a karmic worldview. The dynamics are evidently complex, but you can see the point.

So under a Rational Spiritual worldview probably the greatest test is to work out why the outcomes we sometimes so fervently desire do not seem to come to fruition. The lessons we learn from this, whether they involve having faith and patience that we are following the life plan we have set ourselves and that the outcome will emerge in the end, or instead analyzing the karmic dynamics behind why a desired outcome should have remained unfulfilled – and often only understanding and fully appreciating these dynamics after a considerable interval, or even only once we return to the light realms – are one of the most important elements of karmic progression.

It is also clear that if we could obtain any outcome we desired at will and by visualization alone, our capability for karmic learning would be severely restricted. Where would be the scope for the everyday and practical effort of striving to achieve an objective that is important to us – whether that be to develop a particular skill, or a business, or a relationship, or a happy and successful family – over prolonged periods of time, by sheer graft and hard work, and with resilience against sometimes huge obstacles? I would suggest that this is one of the most rewarding and enriching of experiences on the physical plane.

Multiple Realities

The scientific realisation that the supposedly physical realm is not really physical at all, and that there are multiple nonphysical dimensions, has produced the corollary of the 'many worlds hypothesis' - which suggests that there are multiple nonphysical 'realities'. When taken to its ultimate conclusion, these are presented as an infinite number of alternate realities, each one generated on every occasion that there is the minutest possibility of an alternative event occurring. Crucially, these alternate realities tend to be discussed in terms of them having the same status and validity as the 'reality' of the 'physical' plane that we are all consciously experiencing right now, which would mean that each of us would actually be only one version of an infinite number of minutely differentiated selves. But can this really be true?

Interlife regression evidence suggests that during the past-life review, and in other ongoing interlife exercises, we can go back and replay past events but taking different courses of action.³ In some contexts we appear to do this alone, or perhaps just with a guide, so that any other people involved in our re-enactment of past experiences act more like imprints or 'thought-forms', and not with the fully interactive consciousness of the souls concerned. But it also appears that we can role-play events in our past lives with the active cooperation of other members of our soul group. This does appear to have more of the characteristics of accessing genuinely interactive alternate realities, and there is nothing to suggest that there is any theoretical restriction on the number of alternatives we can play out - even if in practice diminishing returns would accrue from excessive role-playing.

So it is certainly seems that alternate realities of a sort are available for us to experience in the interlife, and from a learning perspective they seem to have a comparable validity to our actual experiences in the physical realm. But do they have the same underlying validity?

In fact we find that interlife regression evidence gives us every reason to suppose that our collective, fully interactive, spontaneous experience of the physical realm is a unique reality not matched by any of the alternatives that we can only experience retrospectively in the interlife. There is nothing to suggest that they are realities that an infinite number of alternative selves actually experience as we go along, in the same way that we do life in the physical plane. Indeed, there is absolutely no mention in interlife regression evidence of such multiple selves.

So it seems that, rather than a number of homogenous selves and realities operating in a parallel timeframe, our one true self experiences what it likes. On the one hand it participates in the collective physical venture we call incarnation, and on the other it explores a potentially infinite number of possible alternatives, sometimes in conjunction with other souls, but only retrospectively and in the psycho-spiritual context of the light realms.

The Nature of Time

Many commentators suggest that time does not really exist – at least not in the way that we in the physical realm perceive it, and albeit that this is one of the 'false' perceptions that allow us to operate effectively in that realm. More specifically, some suggest that all incarnate lives – past, present and future – are happening concurrently, and that feedback between them can and does occur.

If we commence by examining the apparent nature of time in the light realms, elapsed time is clearly experienced differently in them – just as it often is in dreams, for example. Interlife periods of, say, several hundred years, might feel as if they flash past in the blink of an eye. Panoramic and vivid past-life reviews can sometimes appear almost instantaneous. And that is before we even consider the fact that past-life and probable next-life events are readily available for scrutiny. But does this mean that the concept of consecutive time does not exist at all in the light realms? No, it does not.

None of our interlife regression subjects suggest this, although it might be possible to argue that most of us who are still in the reincarnation cycle are relatively inexperienced souls, who remain to some extent constrained by earthly perceptions even in the light realms. Nevertheless, the whole interlife experience still seems to operate on the basis of consecutive rather than simultaneous experiences, with cause and effect. So, for example, the knowledge gleaned during the past-life review plays an important part in, and is fed into, the activity of next-life planning.

So let us now turn to the question of whether, even if the concept of consecutive time is a valid one, it can somehow be combined with the concept of concurrent time. Of course, if time somehow flowed in cycles or loops, then events that appeared consecutive would also have a degree of concurrency. This is the basis of the endless speculation about time travel in science fiction books and films. And the reason that it causes its proponents such logistical problems is that they attempt to apply it exclusively to the physical realm, as if such loops would allow someone to actually go back in 'physical' time and act differently, thus setting off a whole new chain of events quite different from those that happened first time round. But clearly this would be a mistaken view if it is true that the collective, fully-interactive experience of physical reality is unique and, indeed, not capable of retrospective alteration.

Nevertheless, on an individual level different people remember past events differently; even quite recent events will be recalled quite differently by two participants depending on their subjective viewpoint. So the only thing that gives an event any great validity for any given person is their perception of it – and this perception can change over time. For example, when we revisit past events in our conscious minds we often think about what we can learn from how we or someone else behaved, or even what would have happened if we or they had done something differently. This is a forerunner to how we replay events during past-life reviews with far greater clarity and understanding, seeing them from other angles or even by putting ourselves into one of the other characters' shoes – both of which are regularly reported interlife learning tools. Any of these exercises can produce a change in our perceptions that allows us to learn and grow. So we can go back and alter events in a lighjt-realms context, even if this does not alter them in the physical realm, or alter any other soul's original experience. I would argue that it is in this psycho-spiritual as opposed to physical context that the past is ever with us, and ever able to feedback into our learning-experience loop. That is, however, a long way short of the contention that we are living our past lives concurrently with this one.

What, then, of our future lives? Are these somehow being played out concurrently so that they too are part of the feedback loop? Interlife regression evidence suggests that there exists a concept of a 'tapestry' in the light realms in which, at any one moment, a complete and total future for all life in the universe is envisaged.⁴ Only in this way can we, for example, plan and choose the major probabilities of our next life during the interlife. But that future at any one moment will never be actualized on the physical plane, because karmic choice and free will alters it from moment to moment. On that basis it seems clear that, just as past events in the physical realm cannot be fundamentally altered, future events or lives in the physical realm do not already exist except as mere probabilities.

So, while our current actions are influencing our probable future all the time, the reverse is unlikely to be true – except perhaps in the sense that the major future probabilities that already exist for our current life, from the interlife plan we made before birth, exert a degree of influence 'in advance'. But our future incarnations beyond this one do not already exist in any definitive physical sense. And nor, even to the extent that they may exist as probabilities of which we are currently unaware, are they likely to be capable of looping feedback back into our current life. This would set up expectations that would prejudice our current attitudes to such an extent that the operation of karmic free will would be severely impaired.

Conclusion

The three propositions - that the physical world is only a set of perceptions that we create for ourselves; that there are multiple realities that are effectively indistinguishable from each other; and that time can flow in loops - are undoubtedly superficially attractive. They raise rather complex questions whose answers we can only guess at with our present state of knowledge. But we can and indeed should make intelligent guesses about them, and try to understand them in a full, Rational-Spiritual context. And the research material I have collated in The Book of the Soul suggests that they only hold true in a few highly specific ways.

So, it seems that to a large extent the physical world is just an illusion in which we create our own reality, but within certain individual and collective karmic limitations. It seems that to some extent there are multiple realities, but they are not experienced by multiple homogenous selves, and they only exist in a retrospective and psycho-spiritual context that is not the same as the collective, fully-interactive experience of incarnation in the physical plane. And it seems that our perception of time in the physical realm is limited and that feedback loops do exist, but again only in an individual psycho-spiritual context and primarily in relation to the past and not the future.

Source References

1. Lawton, The Book of the Soul, chapter 6.

2. Ibid., chapter 6, p. 137.

3. Ibid., chapter 5, p. 104.

4. Ibid., chapter 8, pp. 217-18.