Gerrit Gielen

We human beings have always longed to understand the world around us. Ages ago, we called on the gods to help us understand the world, but gradually, we turned to the laws of nature, one example—the law of gravity. Indeed, the world around us seems to behave according to these causal laws. They appear to explain so much, to be all-determining, nevertheless, some people experience things in life that are outside this causal construct. They experience events and encounters on their life path that are meaningful to them. They find meaning in events that affect their inner growth, gradually bring wisdom, and add great value to their lives.

This begs the question of whether the world is really determined by anonymous mathematical causal laws such as the laws of physics. If that’s true, how is it possible for some people to perceive their experiences as meaningful? Or you could also frame the question by simply saying spiritual views clash with causal, rational views.

Suppose you unexpectedly run into an old childhood friend you haven’t seen in a long time. All the memories, feelings, and thoughts that flood your whole being absolutely defy the scientific viewpoint that your friend is nothing more than a collection of atoms driven by selfish genes. You realize that the experience you are having is way more than that.

Some questions to think about:

• In regard to reincarnation—if we have lived multiple lifetimes on Earth, how is it possible that our planet was so sparsely populated in the past? At present the population is eight billion compared to about two hundred million long ago. How could that be when we all existed back then?
  
• If suffering and victimization results from our actions in previous lives, and if the perpetrator acted first wouldn’t their victims be innocent?
  
• Do we really have free will if everything is determined by mathematical laws of nature and chance?
  
• If we merely consist of atoms, how is life after death possible?
  
• How does a collection of atoms have experiences and an inner life?

In this essay, I will clarify how the spiritual worldview is fundamentally different from the traditional materialistic one. The spiritual is meaningful, in contrast to the fundamentally meaningless materialistic, which has a completely different causal structure. The core of the spiritual worldview is consciousness, not matter. Matter acts as a channel for expressing consciousness and making encounters possible. In the realm of spirituality, oneness and consciousness are at the center of everything, while in materialism, separation and death are.

The concept of materialism, sometimes referred to as atheism, implies that causality sets up a chain of cause and effect within time. The cause is in the past. So, within time and the laws of physics, something in the past causes something to happen in the future. Period. It excludes any other explanation of the process such as consciousness and the human soul.

In the spiritual worldview, the cause of what happens lies outside of time and is therefore not in the past. It exists on a timeless, conscious inner plane. This plane is called the causal sphere where the events in our lives have their real origin.

Logical quandaries such as those I mentioned above arise when the two worldviews get mixed up together. It’s as if we believe that the earth is both flat and round at the same time. Such conundrums dissolve when we realize that the physical world is part of the meaningful universe and not separate from it. The physical laws form the preconditions for meaningful experiences; they make meaningful experiences possible. We can compare them to the rules of a game.

The Meaningful Universe

What is a meaningful universe? In a meaningful universe a deep, internal causal sphere creates the events that happen in your life. These events enable meaningful experiences to occur and make themselves known. When we perceive that an experience enriches our consciousness and helps us become wiser and more loving, we say it is meaningful. The source of these meaningful events is the causal sphere. What causes the event does not lie in the past but in the timeless conscious field of the eternal Now. For example, in regard to reincarnation, both perpetrator-hood and victimhood are in the Now. They do not originate in the past. However, they are connected to the field of experiences that we call the past.

In a meaningless world, also referred to as the traditional physical universe, events themselves have no meaning. They are caused by random past events and the physical laws that lie outside our consciousness. In a meaningful universe, the physical universe is the means by which we can engage in revelatory, enriching experiences. We experience the physical universe, but there is no reality outside it.

I will use a metaphor to explain our relationship with the causal world. An author of psychological novels wants to draft a new book, and his or her idea is of a woman vacationing in Paris. As a tourist, she takes a lot of photos that she eventually looks at when she gets home. As she is looking through the photos, she is alarmed to spot a childhood friend in one of them whom she had long believed to be dead, in fact, she had attended her funeral. So, the plot line begins!

Now, she has to figure out who her friend really was, how their friendship developed and what happened to her in the past. She creates a long list of questions and has to figure out how to devise answers to those questions. Entire lives have to be imagined, entire families, dramatic events and in addition, emotional developments have to be conjured up and explained. The author constructs an outline of the story, and eventually, the woman on vacation in Paris begins to search for her friend she thought was dead. At the end of the novel, she makes sure there is a surprising and satisfying dénouement to satisfy the reader.

Of course, there are deeper layers to the story. Ultimately, the main character, the tourist, is searching for herself, and the search is really a journey into her own inner self. Who is she? The memories of her friend remind her of something that she has lost. What is missing inside of her? Her decision to search for this long-lost friend from her past triggers something in her. The friend, presumed dead, symbolizes something profound that is dead inside of her. In addition, the author hopes to reawaken something in the reader while she tells the story. In other words, the story is multilayered.

Throughout the story, events follow each other chronologically with occasional flashbacks. The reader experiences the story developing over time; it has a chronological beginning, middle, and end. The flashbacks are used to clarify things and allow them to be viewed from a different perspective. The reader experiences time and causality as they unfold on the page. Events take place in time and follow each other logically; one thing comes after the other. The main character in the story does not know what happened to her friend but gradually she discovers the truth. In the end, it all becomes clear to her, and she finally unravels and understands the mystery of the dead woman in the photo.

We can compare the story to the way we experience life. Events follow each other. What happens in the present moment is caused by something in the past. When we look back on the course of our lives, we finally understand these events. We understand why we behaved as we did and why others did too.

In the novel, we observe both forms of causality. The author drafts the story, so it unfolds in a way the reader experiences it as if they were there. The reader is provided with a pleasant aesthetic experience. This is one of the author’s psychological goals. She hopes the reader will be captivated while reading the story and at the same time discover the deeper layers by recognizing something of themselves in the main character, something that they also have lost and are trying to rediscover.

In summary there are two causal flows:

1. Within the framework of the book, the sequence of events logically follows in accordance with the laws of nature. We follow this stream as we read the pages of the book in order, one at a time. We can compare this to the way we experience the days of our lives.
   
2. Outside of the book is the writer’s stream of thought, her ideas, which causes the book to come into being, and that is what gives it meaning.

We can distinguish two completely different flows that take place in two completely different worlds. The first within the world of the book, the second outside of it.

The first causal stream is essentially an illusion, not a process in its own right. It merely serves to support the second causal stream and allows the reader to gradually discover and experience the deeper layer of the story.

We can compare this to our own experience. There is an apparent causal stream within the world of time and space as we experience it. There is also a stream whose source is in the causal world and gives meaning to the events as we experience them.

Recently, I was watching a documentary about the American rock band The Eagles. One of the members talked about the period of time when he was a member of the band. When I was in the middle of it, it seemed like total chaos, but looking back, it seemed like a perfectly composed literary novel.

When we get older and look back on our lives, we feel the same. In the middle of it, it seems rather chaotic and random, but in retrospect, it appears meaningful and it all just fell into place.

Our lives have meaning. We can’t find the meaning and understand it if events in the universe we live in are explained solely by the first causal flow, stated above. We can compare our situation in life to that of the reader as they experience the events that unfold as they turn the pages. The things that happen and the encounters described are not just what happens on the surface, there is a deeper layer, and we find meaning in that layer and are enriched by it.

Who is the author of the book of your life? It is you. It is your soul. The soul creates what you experience. Based on its experiences in previous lives, the soul enters into the body you have in this incarnation. As it does so, it forgets its previous lives to start a fresh new page in the lengthy book of your life. In this incarnation, your soul wants to have new experiences.

For the soul, the days of our lives are like the pages of the book on which the story is written. Of course, the personality has a certain degree of freedom. In that respect, life is more like a computer game than a book. There are all kinds of choices possible, but the main storyline and the most important events are fixed.

The Physical Universe Seen as a Space for Experience

The physical universe is a canvas on which the soul creates space for its experience. That space is the sum of all the possible events that could happen in a lifetime. For example, a trip to China may be one possible experience to have, but a trip to the moon may not be. Certain events in the space of your experience are not possible, others are probable, and still others are certain and meaningful. These spaces of experience are not isolated; you can meet others, hang out together, and share deep experiences.

The universe is the sum of all the spaces of experience. To stick with the imagery of the book, it is an infinite library, and it contains all the books. It is a divine space of experience where one can live and experience infinite possibilities. The physical universe is not something that is just made up of the physical such as atoms and stars. It is a space that makes unique experiences possible for an infinite number of beings. That is what it is designed and intended for; that is why time and space were conceived. Space provides a human being with a limitation of experiences so that it is possible to focus on something in particular independent of what is happening in the rest of the universe. Time provides us with a meaningful ordering of those experiences. We can compare the physical universe to a stack of blank pages upon which a story is written. The limitations are not in the paper, but in the mind of the writer. The difference between spirituality and rationality mentioned in the introduction can be explained from this perspective.

The Traditional View

The traditional definition of the universe is that of a three-dimensional space made up of particles and a single timeline. The whole moves along the timeline from the past to the future. Events in the past determine the future. Human life is meaningless determined by chance, a brief moment between birth and death. According to this definition, the universe is a kind of meaningless prison.

The New View

This universe we experience is an experiential space created especially for us by our soul. It is meaningful. It is there for us. Through the experience of living our lives, our soul gains living knowledge, which brings meaning. Knowledge can come from a book, or from experience. The soul likes to experience. Then, it not only brings meaning, but it also brings awareness. This whole—the space of experience, ourselves, our soul, is a particle in an infinitely large universe—the all.

The Soul

Our soul is the source of our wisdom and knowledge. From our perspective, the soul has gained that wisdom in the linear process of its many incarnations. In each life, a new piece of wisdom was gained that enriched the soul. Seen in this way, the soul is something that develops over time.

But the soul’s perspective of itself is different. The soul has always possessed wisdom and experience because it exists independently of time, but that wisdom had to have been gained somewhere in time. Seen from this perspective, the soul is like the rays of the sun. At one end of each ray there is a life gaining experience in an experiential space linked to time and space. One end of the ray exists in the timeless sphere of the soul, and the other end of the ray evolves in an experiential space. The ray itself is part of the soul, separate from time and space, but it experiences both.

We experience time and space, but we are also separate from them. It is precisely because we are separate from them that we can experience them. When we see a clock ticking, for example, we realize we are moving through time and are therefore separate from it. When we look at a landscape, all the details of it come together in our minds and form a whole—the landscape. But there is no one brain cell where everything comes together and transforms all the different information into one image. The “Oneness” we experience cannot be pinpointed to a certain location in our brain.

This canvas called the world where we gain experience has the following characteristics: it is alive, infinite, multidimensional, and non-linear.

Characteristics of the Experiential Space

The questions stated in the introduction can be traced back to the contradiction between a worldview in which the events of our lives are meaningful and significant and a universe in which everything is determined by chance and the natural laws that exist completely independent of our minds. The old classical definition of the universe is that it is dead, three-dimensional, and exists on a time axis, an endless chain of cause and effect. In contrast, the meaningful universe, the experiential space, is alive, infinite, multidimensional, and non-linear.

Alive

What does it mean to be alive? We say that something is alive if there is consciousness behind its outer form. Something that is alive experiences the universe in its own unique way. If you close your eyes and go within, you will realize that the basis of your existence is consciousness. Without consciousness, you would not be aware of anything. You would not be able to think, feel, or act—you would not be. What you know of the universe, you know from within, and consciousness is at the heart of it.

Isn’t this the basic principle of everything? The source of all life? In the meaningful universe, yes, that is true. Consciousness is behind everything in form. Anything that does not have consciousness does not exist, cannot manifest itself in form. Without the inner, there is no outer; everything has a heart.

The meaningful universe is a living universe, a universe permeated by and based on consciousness. The old traditional idea of the universe is that it is machine like, not a living thing, nothing with any inner life, and is essentially dead. In fact, defining consciousness in that way is not accurate. After all, if everything is divided into time and space, oneness is not possible, and that is precisely what consciousness is. It is the Oneness behind the form. When I talk to a person, I do not see that person as a collection of atoms, I am aware of the Oneness behind the form. That is life.

Infinity

Logic is altogether different when we speak of infinity. The German mathematician David Hilbert devised Hilbert’s Hotel. Imagine there is a hotel with an infinite number of rooms and each room is occupied. The hotel is full. Each room has been assigned a unique number from 1 to ∞ (the symbol for infinity). Out of the blue, every guest is asked to move to a room number twice as high as their current room number. The guest in room one goes to room two, the guest in room two goes to room four, the guest in room three goes to room six. All the guests remain in the hotel, but all the odd-numbered rooms are empty, thus, half the hotel is empty.

You can repeat this exercise many times. If you use the number ten, and the guests move ten times to a room with a number twice as high, only one of 1,024 rooms is occupied. If we wander through the corridors of this infinite hotel, it seems that almost all the rooms are empty, only occasionally do we encounter a guest. Yet no one has left the hotel; everyone is still in their room. It is a strange experience trying to fathom the logic of infinity!

Something similar happens on the Earth. The Earth is essentially like Hilbert’s Hotel; an infinite space in which experience happens. It is not a physical thing. It is not a three-dimensional sphere traveling through space from your soul’s perspective, it is traveling through an infinite multidimensional space. Just as the hotel appears to be almost empty, but everyone is in the hotel, the world of long ago seems sparsely populated, yet everyone who is living today is there.

Which brings up multidimensionality.

Multidimensionality

The idea of infinity can frighten us. How can we be limitless? How can we go on and on? How are we infinite? This can be a scary idea. We prefer to imagine we are finite so we can understand, oversee, and at least sometimes feel safe. However, sooner or later, we reach the limit of believing we are merely finite. We realize our “thought box” has become a prison and we let our consciousness break free.

Once upon a time, we were extremely frightened by the endless fields, forests, and seas we discovered on Earth, and then over time, we were not. And at some point, we will venture out into the cosmos when we find that the Earth has become too small for us. We will sense that there is something more, something that exists outside the box we find ourselves in. Sooner or later, we will want to know what that is.

Multidimensionality makes the existence of boxes and space for experience possible within the infinite. Specifically, the physical world you experience has three spatial dimensions and one temporal dimension. We believe that we all experience them in common, but that is not the case. Every space that holds experience is uniquely created just for us. Multidimensionality makes that possible. Multidimensionality means that parallel realities exist where we have made different choices and they exist right alongside each other. We don’t have to fear making the wrong choice in our lives because everything will ultimately be experienced.

Infinity and multidimensionality are other words for freedom. What we call the universe is just a small part of something much bigger—the multiverse. To understand the multiverse, we have to think differently about space and time. When we think of space stretching infinitely in all directions, we think that it encompasses everything. It does not. For example, when we are dreaming, we find ourselves in a completely different space. Inside your head there are only electric signals, not the images you see in the dream. Your dream is not happening in physical space as we know it. It is happening in another space. We might call it the dream space.

Even though we cannot imagine it, in addition to that three-dimensional space that stretches infinitely in all directions, there are an infinite number of other spaces possible—parallel worlds and universes. There are no limitations. If you really look closely, you can see an entire universe behind the eyes of every person you meet. What is remarkable is that our consciousness is connected to all of them. Consciousness operates from the level of Oneness and because it approaches everything from that viewpoint, it takes the shape of anything and everything as it gains experience.

Multidimensionality means that the universe around us shapes itself to our consciousness and gives us the environment we need to experience and grow. It means that every aspect of consciousness has its own unique space in which it can experience.

Non-linear

Past, present, future and the endless chain of cause and effect. That is how we think, how the universe is seen, how everything is explained. That is the linear image. It is easy to understand because we recognize it from experiencing the world around us.

Modern physics shows us that it is not that simple because time can pass slowly or quickly, and at the level of light, it can even stand still. The present moment is not a clear-cut concept. An event that lies in the future for one person may lie in the past for another. There is no place at all in physics for the passage of time as we see it on a clock, no such thing as the flow of time. Physics implies there is a time axis, but no phenomenon that moves along the time axis at a speed of one second per second.

Philosophy raises fundamental questions about our understanding of time, such as how something can be, and then a moment later not be because it is no longer in the present. It doesn’t make sense psychologically either. We look in the mirror and see our aging faces but behind our eyes there is something that does not age. The physical child we were in the past is gone as far as the outside world is concerned but that child still lives within us.

Recently, I heard an old woman sigh—How is it possible that the girl I am ended up in this old body? The answer is that you do not age because you are separate from time, but your body does. Physics, philosophy, and psychology all show that our naive everyday understanding of time is incorrect. At the same time, this linear time does have a deep psychological meaning. By experiencing things in a certain order—by reading the pages of the book in order—meaning becomes possible, the story of our life emerges, and we gain wisdom and meaning. That meaning ultimately is absorbed into the timeless wisdom and knowledge of the soul.

The non-linear perspective is as follows: From the causal sphere, the soul radiates its energy like the sun. Each ray incarnates in a space of experience and becomes completely absorbed in it. The meaning experienced there is ultimately returned to the soul in the form of lived wisdom. This is one whole. The soul “conceives” the story and creates the space of experience in which the story is lived by a ray, an incarnation of the soul. This brings knowledge to life and transforms it into wisdom. The timeless wisdom of the soul.

From our perspective, it seems there is a cycle. The soul creates. It incarnates into its creation, experiences meaningful events, and the wisdom gleaned from those experiences is absorbed by the soul. In a sense, this is the cycle of rebirth. From the perspective of the soul, this takes place in a timeless Now.

The soul knows that experiences are necessary to attain knowledge. To deeply experience things, the less you know the bigger the experience, so former knowledge gained in past lifetimes is forgotten when the soul dives into a new incarnation. When the soul’s incarnation experience is complete, consciousness returns to the level of knowledge separate from time and space that was created to ensure meaningful experiences could be gained.

Our lives are experiencing what we already know deep inside.

Finally—The Eternal Now

The now that we know is not eternal. It is only a moment, after which our consciousness moves on to another point on the time axis and a new moment appears. This is how we pass through time, this is how we grow. This is how we read the pages of the book of our lives and as we read, we find meaning and come to a deeper understanding.

But what if our consciousness is already there? What if our consciousness is infinite and encompasses everything? Consciousness then ceases its journey through time because there is nothing more to add to that consciousness. Everything that is experienced exists within it. The progression of time changes the focus of our consciousness, and we concentrate on another moment.

This is the eternal Now. Every living being, every plant, every animal that has ever existed exists within that eternal Now. It is an infinitely vast landscape in which everything is. Everything is present in the light of that one all-encompassing consciousness. Everything that ever was and everything that ever will be. Nothing is lost.

The eternal Now is the one all-encompassing, timeless consciousness. It is the source, it is the field of love in which we live, the ultimate causal field. The eternal connection of all with all.

You can walk through a beautiful landscape and gradually discover that everything was there all along; you can see it as a whole. Oneness is the merging of both perspectives. Only when we have seen and experienced every plant, every animal, separately, does the beauty of the whole take on its deepest meaning.

There is no such thing as disappearing into some big picture. The basis of the big picture is deep respect for the individual.

Nothing is lost; everything comes to fruition.

Man is both creator and created.

You are the eternal Now.

© Gerrit Gielen

Edited by Suzy Conway

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