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The Year 2320 By Lucas Horton I had this experience some time ago. It was strange, very strange. I have struggled to write about it for reasons which are explained below; nonetheless the experience has given me a deeper understanding of reality and of our place in the universe. But just as this vision of the future has now taken months for me to begin to comprehend, it takes time and considerable effort to set it down in a coherent fashion, so please bear with me. What happened to me was that I was taken 300 years into the future. I perceived it as a spiritual experience, but it is more accurate to say that the full experience was planted in me as a seed and it has continued to unfold. So, 2320 - some three hundred years from now. Firstly let me say that this future, as it has developed in my understanding, is one that I would be very happy to live in. I also now realise that part of the point of the experience is for me to allow this future to unfold in me so that it brings about changes in the present. For it is making the connection between this current existence and that future existence, like an illuminated path connecting these two realities and guiding me along the way I should be travelling. This new understanding brings both a sense of peace and a sense of purpose which seems wholly beneficial. Maybe it will help others as well. One aspect of this experience that has been convincing to me has been both unexpected and difficult to understand. To illustrate how difficult it is to describe and understand something that is initially beyond one’s understanding one only has to look back 300 years into the past. In 1720, Sir Isaac Newton was heralding in the scientific revolution with his understanding of the universe. Even so, great mind that he was, he knew nothing about the concepts of quantum physics, DNA, mobile phones, the internet, airplanes, spaceships and all the hundred and one things that we take for granted three hundred year later. In the next three hundred years, the pace of change is likely to be significantly greater, so we should not be surprised that we can only glimpse a small part of this future reality. I am certainly no Isaac Newton, so if at times my understanding seems a bit hazy as I take you through my story, please just bear with me. By the time you get to the end I hope I will have been able to convey some of it to you. The best way that I can describe this world of 2320 is to focus on three specific aspects of our life. It is the interaction of all these three aspects that forms a completely different culture to what we have today. And yet all these aspects have their roots in the developing understandings of today. Firstly, it is the concept and status of the sovereign human individual and all that it implies. In 2320 we know who we are, we know why we are and we know where we are going. Secondly, it is the changing role and structure of the human community, which includes politics, how we govern ourselves, and the virtual disappearance of the nation state with the rise of the Human Foundation. Lastly, it is about a technology that is very different from what we have today: a technology that facilitates the spread of humanity across the fifty star systems that exist within fifteen light years of Earth. All these aspects are inter-related but all have their origins in today’s world, existing as they do behind the clamour and noise of everyday life. It could be said that the future I experienced was only one of many possible futures, but, as you will see, this particular future is one that offers hope, direction and inner peace. It is possible that the more people that experience it and believe in it as a possibility, the more likely it is to come into reality. 2320 and the Sovereign Individual The first aspect that hit me straight away was that most people had the general understanding about the purpose of being human: what we are and why we were created. What has emerged or evolved is what I would call the concept of the Sovereign Individual. All Equal, All Unique. This most basic point is that we are all equal because we all have a spark of the divine in us. This divine spark in each of us is indivisible, different, but of equal status. This divine spark is interwoven into and is at the core of our individuality: the essential me, the essential you. It is where our equality and our diversity comes from. Because we are all equal we are required to respect each other, whether we like each other or not. It is this understanding about the need to respect each other even though we may disagree with each other which is the stark difference to human civilisation today. A lack of respect for each other is viewed as being seriously unbalanced and attracting public and private censure. It is like the concept of slavery, once viewed as being acceptable, but now universally understood as being beneath the minimum standards of humanity. We are not defined by what we believe, what group we may be part of, be it birth country, gender or any other characteristic. We are human before we are American or British or Chinese. We are human before we are male or female or somewhere in between. We are human before we are part of any other group. Being human then is what unites us, all of humanity. This is most starkly seen when we connect with other life forms in the universe. Being human is more than having two legs, two arms and a head at the top of our body. Other creatures grown and evolved on other worlds have different body plans, different physical characteristics, but they have the same content of this divine spark that both makes us different but which at the same time makes us equal. It makes us brothers and sisters and all shades in between whatever planet we come from, a theme that I will return to in a later edition of this newsletter. Support for the principles of uniqueness and diversity of the individual are at the core of the Foundation. I may have talents as an architect, a philosopher, a gardener and have no talent as a chef, a musician or a therapist. It is these aspects of our life where we increasingly work together collaboratively based on these uniquely inspired talents in what become known as the Houses. More about Houses and the Foundation later. On the Horizon The other pictorial image that came to me as key is that human beings were created to live on the horizon of life, master of what is below and open to what is above. We are masters of what is below by being bold, active, curious and courageous; and we are open to what is above by letting go and being open to Grace, being surrendered in the face of the divine.This is the key to finding our place in the universe for it is the evolutionary understanding about what it is to be a physical being and what it is to be a spiritual being. How to be both, for this is how we were made. This is how it is with us when we try to make sense of our physical existence and why we are always searching for something deeper, something beyond the confines of our physical lives. But the physical, the material, gives us needs, which fuel our desires, and are the imperative for sustaining and developing our lives. But this is never enough, there is always something more. Being open to Grace and the divine is the something more. It is a common anxiety about Artificial Intelligence in the 2020’s that somehow computers will develop beyond our intelligence and wipe us out as being defective. Computers and AI never achieve that state and it is a misunderstanding about where humanity and computers are placed in the hierarchy of existence. Computers belong to a material universe, they are neither good nor bad, the material is there for us to use. When man opens himself to Grace this higher force moves through us into the lower levels of existence. It is like standing under a shower. It comes from above and penetrates to the below. It is also where all human inspiration comes from, it comes from above. Computers can never have that connection and so can never access that human inspiration. In the 2320’s computers are used to do complex and precise mathematical calculations that are needed to unlock the secrets of material existence. Computers are our servants and stay as such as long as we maintain this openness to Grace. Humanity holds this balance on the horizon that I speak about, masters of what is below, open to what is above. Go Forth and Multiply We were created to go forth into the vast expanse of the universe, driven by that boldness, courage and curiosity. But why? It is to explore and populate the whole of the physical universe and in the process become channels for those higher non-corporeal forces. To open up the way for these higher forces to penetrate and influence the whole of the material universe. They can only do that when they work through humans who have a physical presence. It is to meet others who are also driven by the same set of drives, but who have evolved from different places and with other body plans, but who are on a similar mission whether they understand that or not. 250-300 years, is that all we have? One of the main questions that people ask in the 2320’s is about whether their current life expectancy which of about 250-300 years is the physical maximum. Now I was not shown what the technologies were that allowed people to live that long, but part of it was the sense of inner peace that most humans had which came from this understanding about who we are and why we are here. It seems that this knowledge and understanding has taken away much of the stress and anxiety that people feel today. The other aspect that has contributed to a longer life is the sense of space and opportunity that exists for the human race. The portal technology that underpins 2320 technology literally allows an infinite amount of space that is available for personal exploration and expression. When on a daily basis we can get up close to the spectacular rings of Jupiter or the methane volcanoes on Pluto or the million and one spectacular sites that are available in the fifty star systems humans have colonised, once we raise our eyes up to that universe, much of our petty anxieties drop away. Humanity has generally been filled with a wish to go out and explore. We are made curious but most of us in the 2020’s have limited opportunities to engage with that curiosity. This aspect has huge consequences to what it means to lead a full life. If you have children in your 20’s 30’s and 40’s, then at the age of 70 when they have all grown up and you are free of the upbringing role you could be just at the beginning of your life journey, rather than sliding into the sunset. Just imagine what you could do if you had another 150-200 years of life, having accumulated wisdom, work skills and a more balanced life view. In 2320 most people take that opportunity to go out and explore and make their energy, talents and life skills available to support the human endeavour of spreading out across the Cosmos. That is why the planet Earth in 2320 has a significantly reduced population, it is down to 900 million people, around 10% of its peak. Indeed, from what I could understand, the main discussion point amongst the people who lived physically on the planet Earth was about whether they should remove all permanent settlements from the Earth so that it could go back to being the rich biosphere that it once was. That is the life and philosophy of the Sovereign Human Being, as it is generally understood in 2320. The Foundation In many ways the Foundation is more difficult to describe and understand because in 2320 it is the biggest thing around. It is the servant of humanity and while also being the repository of much of humanity’s wealth. At the same time, it is the vehicle for care and co-operation between humans and human communities. It is non-sectarian and non-religious, but it is underpinned by all the qualities mentioned earlier that has come to frame the human condition. Writing about it now, it seems to me that the new understanding of who we are and why were created quite naturally causes us to create a new ‘fit for purpose’ institution that reflect and enhances those understandings and brings them in to a new social economic and political order. That is the Foundation. Before 2320 Before I can go on with the 2320 story there are a couple of things I would like to illustrate. One is about surrender and letting go. I wrote this piece a few years ago, actually I had to dig it out of myself, and could only get close to it in prose. As you can see the writing was about the release of a lot of pain that I felt about the old events in my life. I really had to struggle to express it, but it has been cathartic and shows that for me the ability to surrender only comes after I manage to let go of my stuff. Letitgo Change is good. Life is change. Now I understand. I have to let it all go. I hated change, had to embrace it. Fearful of what the future held. Feared being ordinary, feared being normal. Life was painful. Why was it painful? Had to accept it. Accept it as it was, not how I imagined it. Or wanted it. I was a rich man once, I was a poor man once, actually not really true, never been poor, short of cash sometimes. Don’t think I was ever really rich either, just had money sometimes. Been happy sometimes. Been sad sometimes. Have to let it all go. I was dying once, more than once even, I was loved once, a few times maybe. Was I always alive? Was a son once, a grandson even, although I never noticed it back then. Now my Dad is gone I think about him more. Forgive him more, forgive him completely. How can I not? Does he forgive me more? Never knew. Hoped he did, hope he still does. Have to let it all go. Had a mum once, never remembered her, flashes only, kept them out, too hurt, not her fault, but that didn’t seem to make a difference. I was the one hurting, kept the hurt fires burning. Have to let it all go. I am a brother still: hi, bro; hi, sis. We were close once when we were all part of what seemed like the same life, the same life before the many lives, now there are children of the children, children of the children’s children even. Now thirty odd lives where there was once one. Need to live more, love more, risk more, accept the hurt more, struggle more, let it go more. After all the hurt, after all the living, after all the loving, after all the struggles, the disappointments, the heartaches, there eventually comes something else: something peaceful, something quiet, something clear, something pure. It’s the new, or is it the old, inside the universal love, the love of all for the love for all, just for a moment it came, then a few moments more. The more I let it go the more the moments come. This love was there always, unfailing, waiting for me to come back to it, to stop shutting it out. It’s the love for all by the All Loving. I understand now, at least a little. Have to let it all go. - - - - - This next piece is about being human and I did write it after my 2320 experience. We often have a narrow view of what being human is, which is itself a product of not really understanding where humanity is in creation and what our purpose is. In a curious way, I have come to understand that the main purpose of being human is to discover precisely that – namely, the purpose of being human. Most of that is taken up by asking the question and trying to figure out the answer. This collection of writings is me asking all these questions and struggling to undestand the answers that come to me. The Cracker and Me On the 22nd planet of Proxima B The gravity is six times what it should be A scutter crawls out of his nest to be free To emerge from beneath that old cracker tree To be human, is this what it is, in all of space To have sixteen legs and a tough carapace Is that all there is, there must be more, I know I am me, I know I am free, the cracker and me, we know what it is to be free But is it enough, to live and to grow, the cracker and me, not enough just to be, not for me If I am me and he is he, then we are we, but in the me and the we, is there not a thee, For there is a me, there is a he and there is that that joins the me and the he. That which joins the he and the me is also the he and the me, it’s all of us three The he and the me, the we and the free, now I am beginning to see. It really is simple we are made to be free In His image like me, with sixteen legs and a tough carapace It’s Him in this space with that tough carapace, with me and thee and the we to be free. The last piece is about the vision process itself and how it works for me. The point of the experiences for me is to shape my understanding and thereby effect a change in my actions today. Indeed this whole experience of 2320 is not about me experiencing the future, or telling anyone else about the future. The point is to show me what I need to be doing today. |
Emmanuel has been kind enough to give me space for expressing my understanding in a semi public forum, but the real issue is for me to understand this future world sufficiently to act today in a way that connects to that future. 2320 and the Foundation In 2320 the Foundation is the biggest thing around in human affairs. It encompasses nation, community group, world government (or lack of it). More fundamentally it is the vehicle for co-operation between people, groups of people, and groups of groups of people. From the beginning of the emergence of Homo Sapiens some 200,000 years ago the first 97% of that time we lived and co-operated together in groups. It is only since the dawn of civilization - i.e. the last 3% of the existence of Homo Sapiens - that we have lived in cities alone or in individual families. Mostly, genetically, we have lived together, dined together, and supported each other in community groups. At heart we are social animals. We could have only avoided the sabre toothed tiger or trapped the mammoth in groups. As individuals, clever as we may be, it is almost never enough. It’s how we were made. There has been this assumption about the future that we would all be living in mega cities, being a small part in a vast global machine. It is how we have been developing since the industrial revolution (that is the last 0.15% of our history). The assumption has been that this will continue. It doesn’t. Most human life in 2320 is community life, in some ways very similar to pre-civilization tribal life, where people live together, work together, eat together in small bespoke groups, with the community colony providing most of what the individual needs. The individual’s aim is to make the community strong on the understanding that a strong community can support all the needs of the individual. The difference in 2320 from prehistoric times is that the individual is free and the community is wealthy. Individuals are encouraged to move between communities, using their talents where needed and then moving on for the next adventure. As we live longer the time we spend as singles and couples rather than as families becomes the majority of our time. This is already being seen in 2020. Fifty years from now there may be colony communities on Mars, on the Moon and on various other outposts in gateway locations. The first aim of each of these colonies is self-sufficiency and sustainability, providing for the community needs locally. These needs include security, shelter, food, energy, transportation, materials processing etc. The 2320 portal technologies allow all these community colonies to be connected together, but in the current millennia all the technology focus is towards isolated self-sufficiency. This access to self-sufficiency through technological innovation is perfected in off-world colonies and comes to transform the social structures back on Earth. In 2320 there are many thousands of community colonies physically far apart from each other. The nation state does not survive this. Most human institutions have had to be revamped and reformed to cope with this reality. The Foundation is the result. In 2320 an individual – say, in a Mars colony - could be involved in expanding and terraforming the planet through Foundation resources or he/she could go and be at the front end of pioneering a new colony on Tau Ceti, and meeting our new neighbours with all the fun and games that is involved with that. This is possible because individually humanity has decided to contribute to the strength and stability of the Foundation in an ‘I help you so that you can help me’ fashion. What is a Natural Environment? One of the other curious things in thinking about off-world living is what is perceived to be an artificial environment. I would lead what I believe to be a natural healthy life in rural Ireland. Although I spend much of my waking life at home working on a computer, I try to get out for a walk in nature most days. I would assume that I live a relatively stress free natural existence. On closer inspection this is not true. On average I live in an artificial environment for 23 hours out of every 24. My apartment, my car, aeroplanes, offices, cafes, shopping malls - all these are artificial environments. I calculated that this is over 96% of my time!!! In 2320, I would be spending more time in nature than I do today because I could be having breakfast on a beach somewhere in a warm sunny climate rather than in grey wet Ireland, or I could be overlooking some wonderful natural waterfall feature in Africa or South America before returning through the portal to get on with my day which may be here in an apartment in Ireland, on Mars, Ceres, Alpha Centaurus, a space station or anywhere else the portal technology has connected me to in the human network. The bridge from 2020 to 2320 This is all very nice as a visioning exercise but what is important is what does it mean for me today in 2020? For the last year, I have been working on an urban regeneration project in England, collaborating mostly with people I have worked with and trusted before. Since having this vision of 2320 I have been trying to apply the human and technological principles of the 2320 Foundation into our efforts in the present day. It has become clear to me that this is the whole point of the vision for me, to apply what I experienced to what I am doing today. What follows is the emerging plan. We aim to create a self-sufficient community of several thousand people who can live and work in the neighbourhood. The commercial real estate of the town is owned by a community foundation for the long-term benefit of that community and everyone who lives in or near that community. The area is a common enough site in post-industrial Northern England. There will be some projects that will be normal commercial developments, i.e., offices, hotels, residences, a University Research Centres. The first three projects have been clearly defined, and we are well on the way with the site acquisition. We have also recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the local authorities for the comprehensive redevelopment of 150 acres of Town Redevelopment land. This vision has the support of our partners and of the local councils, regional councils and quasi government bodies. So far so good. The plan is a hybrid in that normal development pressures exist and form the backbone to the regeneration. A local firm of lawyers looking to expand so an office scheme constitutes one of the first projects. An athletic training institution, one of the biggest in the UK, needs hotel accommodation for athletes and visitors, so a hotel is another of the first projects. As the scope of the project expands into a whole Town regeneration, self-sufficiency and sustainability issues become more prominent. Aquaponics, food production, energy creation and saving, environmental improvement - all now become part of the project. This project will take up to ten years to come to full fruition, but by the end of it we will have taken what was an environmental wasteland and transformed it into a vibrant, largely self-sufficient community that is capable of being a model for community development in general. We will also have created a significant asset for the long-term benefit of the community. This is fully congruent with the 2320 vision. 2020 to 2320 So this can be said to be a bridge to the 2320 Foundation: a bold vision, needing the co-operation and collaboration of many people and organisations; a courageous statement of intent to create something new and for the benefit of all humanity; the letting go of preconceptions; the willingness to take a long view where the positive vision can and is being implemented on a daily basis. This opportunity has come to us by being open to it, which in my book is what surrender is, being open to Grace. What we need to do now is to implement that vision in our day-to-day actions. One consequence of taking the long view of development is that it allows us to find a balance between self-interest and altruism. We are driven by our self-interest needs from the time of our birth until our dying breath. However, we are not all self-interest. In the guiding image that I have of humanity being on the horizon of life, master of what is below and open to what is above, at the point of change on the horizon we connect with all humanity as equals whilst being open to Grace from above. This balance between self-interest and altruism I see and meet every day in my work. At a deep level, everyone I have ever come across, however self-centred they are or appear to be, is eventually brought to the point of realisation that self-interest is not enough, there has to be something more and altruism is the first step to something more. So I see that self-interest is short-lived, limited to one’s own life generally. Taking the long view means that we can work with people who are looking to make a short term profit. Our aim is to say to them” ‘Sure, here is this project you can make a good return on your investment. Once you have achieved that, then the balance comes to the community for its long-term use’. In reality, this means that we happy to work with commercial partners in order to build up capital in the Foundation long-term. One of the other things that I was made aware of was that about a hundred years from now all the foundations of the world merge into one foundation, with the needs of all humanity at its heart. I will not live to see it, but I am very happy to give the rest of my life to helping to bring this vision into reality, to take the first baby steps, to plant the seed. In fact the first steps have already been taken, the first seeds already planted. In 2020 the largest foundation in the world is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This is proof that self-interest is not enough. Bill Gates has been the wealthiest person in the world for most of the last 20 years. Most of that wealth has been endowed to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Without the self-interest of Bill Gates we would not have got very far into the modern era, while his altruism could eventually get humanity a whole lot further. And so it is for all of us: we have God-given talents, we are infused with the curiosity to see what lies hidden, we are imbued with the courage to be single-minded in the pursuit of finding answers and we have the persistence to keep getting back on the horse if we fall off. What we can visualise with our eyes closed today, we will see with our eyes open tomorrow. The choice of vision is ours. Fortune favours the brave. 2320 The Portal of Reality Perhaps the most difficult of all to describe. For how do you describe something that does not yet exist and that we do not yet have the physics, the understanding, to comprehend or to be able to explain? On my visit to 2320 I stood in front of a portal which was just like any regular doorway, but which connected where I stood with some far flung place. I suggested that it must take a prodigious amount of energy for two remote places that could be light years apart, to be brought together like this on either side of one doorway? But I was told that I was wrong, it didn’t require great energy; what it did take was great precision in computation. I don’t know what this means, but in looking for the base of an understanding from my 2020 perspective I would say that this could be in part positional information, that the creation of an interface between two bodies that are on separate orbits, orientations and states light years apart would be very challenging.The measurement required may be down to the smallest quantum measurement and could also be related to describing the relative positions of the two places in higher dimensional mathematics. However it is achieved, the consequential understanding must be that at a basic level reality and the information about the reality are indistinguishable from one another. Reality is information. On the personal level, this is certainly so as far as my conscious perception of reality is concerned. All the physical third world that I believe I inhabit is a creation inside my own mind. The information comes to me as one dimensional pulses of electrical and chemical energy passing through my eyes and ears, which somehow my mind makes enough sense of to create the image of the outside world that I experience as reality. That is all information, and limited information at that. The Physical and The Spiritual are both completely different and yet it seems to be our destiny to try to integrate them into a single whole in our daily lives. For until we accept the interconnected reality of these two different worlds we cannot truly comprehend what it is to be human and thereby find our true path. 2320 reality has to some extent harmonised and integrated these two aspects of the human existence. So enough of all that. The universe is what it is whether we understand it or not. It is not a necessary condition for living that we understand what everything means. Only the very curious, like myself, try do delve beneath the veil to see what lies beneath. We may be entirely wrong, but we may be slightly less wrong than those who have gone before and that is enough for me. This whole life then, the notion of the Sovereign Individual, the spread of Humanity across the Galaxy, the adjusted institutions of the Foundation, the extended life span, and access to this portal technology, all these things together represent a quite different life to what we experience in 2020. I was taken from 2020 to 2320 without traveling through the years in-between. As a comparison, if I had been able to look back and had been able to take Isaac Newton from the world of 1720 to the world of 2020, he might have seen all the wonders of modern life without having seen all the strife and turmoil that went on in between: The creation of the United States, the decline and loss of all the Empires of the World, the catastrophes of wars of Independence in the USA in France, in Russia, the two World Wars - he would have missed all that. Likewise, I am sure that there will be catastrophic events that await the human race in the next three hundred years, but maybe these 2320 visions can give us hope that through all the trials and tribulations that we are bound to face, a better world awaits, and the universe and ourselves are evolving into something truly remarkable. About Grace What is the most important thing for me to take from this experience of 2320? It is the emergence of Grace. Grace is the action of the highest power underneath the surface of our everyday lives. To be open to Grace is to feel a constant low level bliss vibrating in one’s life. It comes from the highest and penetrates to the deepest. It is the connection of that which was made with that which made it. It cannot really be described; it has to be experienced. It is available to all of humanity, but not many feel it. Not many feel it because not many are open to it. To be open to Grace is to be able to let go of everything you hold dear, for it is the holding on that obstructs this connection. To feel Grace as I do now whilst writing this, is to be how I was meant to be. All the stress and tensions fall away, all the anxieties gone. As I woke this morning I was reminded about the Lord’s Prayer of the Christian religions which starts off ‘Our Father……’. It is not his father or my father; it is our father. We are all on this journey to reconnect with the divine, because we each of us have that spark of divine and the need to reconnect with our creator. Our father, makes us all equal, all connected with the divine. In Islam everything is preceded with ‘In the name of God the most Gracious, the most Merciful’. Everything we do can and should be preceded by the Grace of the most Gracious. And this is the most enduring recollection about my experience of 2320. It is that experience of being accompanied by Grace, that it is the common experience of most people. This is not about belief, or faith; it is about experience. It is in the background all the time. It is like the reassurance that a young child has from their parents when they are playing in their room. It is the background of the comfort and support that is there, with the door open, always present, unspoken, but always there. That is the state we were meant to live in. To be ourselves, to go forth and explore all that can be explored, to experience what it is to be alive. But at the back of everything there is this contact with Grace, this connection of the spirit to the divine, that is the most important place to be as we move out to explore our galaxy and beyond. All praise be to Almighty God. - - - - - |