The Whole Universe
The universe, as a whole, has been around since “living” memory was there to record it. Its existence is based on the accumulated knowledge of the entities within. It is continuously molded, shaped, and expanded upon based on our observations and accumulated knowledge.
The universe appears to be expanding because of dark energy, which some theorize is the manifestation of the collected knowledge of entities within the universe. But what happened at the Big Bang to get things moving? How can the universe manifest the way it did if nothing could have existed at the Big Bang?
An extra-dimensional probe!
Shortly after the universe was created, an extra-dimensional probe appeared into the universe. A civilization from another universe saw that our universe was about to be created and sent a probe to record how it developed.
It only saw nothingness.
The probe’s AI expected to detect a dense mass of quarks, gluons, protons, and neutrons. However, it detected nothing. Nothing at all. This was inconceivable to the probe’s understanding of the sciences programmed into it. The probe scanned and scanned for the expected proto-matter until the matter manifested itself out of the nothingness.
Let there be… something!
The consciousness of the probe sparked the development of the cosmic structures within our universe. This initial interaction caused localized disruptions with the fundamental field (nothingness) to reveal new physical phenomena or particles. The exotic matter it was made of altered the rate of cosmic inflation, structure formation, and ultimately pushed the universe into a new phase of cosmic evolution.
Researchers from across the universe can still detect the probe’s impact by looking for anomalies in cosmic background radiation, gravitational waves, or deviations in the cosmic structure.
Several Billion Years Later
The universe quickly expanded based on the probe’s observations of how the initial matter developed after the Big Bang. The first stars rapidly formed and exploded to create new, more complex elements. After a few billion years, the first life forms developed and became sentient. The new sentient life began observing the universe and contributed to the overall understanding. They observed what the probe sparked and saw the universe was developing in a logical way.
Sentient life throughout the universe developed, died, or transitioned to higher planes of existence. The observations and collected knowledge of sentient life automatically uploads into the ether and manifests as dark energy to power the expansion of the universe.
The universe will continue its expansion, just so long as “life” exists, especially sentient life. The universe may continue existing if non-sentient life exists, but the expansion is theorized to decrease until organisms achieve sentience.
Sentient “life” does not have to be organic in nature, and can develop into many different forms. One of the earliest sentient life forms in the universe was crystalline. They slowly grow and reproduce into more of their kind. They were found by other, more mobile life forms, who deemed them valuable curiosities. They were ultimately taken from their homeworld by means of interstellar trade and can be found across the universe.
Now There’s Us
Humanity developed with a very self-centered view of the universe. We were taught by some power-hungry person/entity to believe that an all-powerful and all-knowing creator god in the sky made the Earth, heavens, and the rest of the universe. Many humans believe, out of the vastness of space, they are the only sentient life forms in existence.
In a small way, these humans are correct.
Without knowledge and observable proof, other sentient life cannot exist within our own pocket universes.
Personal Universes
The universe as you know it started when you were born. It is based on your experiences since birth. As you grow and observe things, the universe expands based on your understanding and knowledge. The personal universe we experience contains: observations, thoughts and personal opinions, and constructs of literary/artistic imagining.
Everything we see, experience, and learn is part of the universe. If we believe in something completely and entirely, it is real in our personal universe. Interactions between others may alter our perspective of the universe. The insane might experience their universe based on other dimensional properties that do not align with our reckoning of how the universe works.
When the body dies, our personal universe ends. The accumulated observations and literary/artistic constructs may physically carry on through sharing our knowledge and imaginings with others.
The universe as a whole incorporates this data automatically as it is observed and passively transmitted into the ether. The fantasies are digested as information and energy, but since they do not physically exist within this universe, they cannot be used to fuel the expansion of the universe. It passes through the bounds of the universe to the multidimensional space between universes.
There is growing evidence that the brain enters a state of heightened activity in the final moments of life, even in patients declared brain dead.
But what is the brain doing in those final moments?
Is it reaching out to the universe?
Is it performing one last act to upload the soul or consciousness into existence itself?
No one truly knows the answers, not even theologians. And tragically, those who experience it are too busy dying to explain it to the living.
The Path of Luminism 