In singing the praises of the Long Earth series by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter, I’ve already mentioned how each book can open the mind to new possibilities. As I reach the end of the final story (The Long Cosmos, published in 2016) I’m feeling my mind stretched again. One of the story-lines throughout the series is particularly relevant to conscious evolution.

Professor Wotan Ulm, an expert on the ability of humans (and others) to ‘step’ between different versions of the (Long) Earth, wrote

‘You are certain you are here, are you not? Ah, but just suppose – if only you had the wit – that you could imagine that you are uncertain where you are. For if you are uncertain, in a quantum-physical sense, your location becomes uncertain too – you are the prime quantum observer of yourself, after all. You become smeared, so to speak, across the adjacent possible, among the infinite number of possible locations where you may possibly be. Then if you subsequently become certain that you are actually in West 2, and not here with me in West 1, then that’s where you are – do you see? You have collapsed the quantum functions once more; you have stepped.

‘Imagination, and a kind of wilful uncertainty. ‘That’s all there is to stepping, Jocasta.’

In the case of the Long Earth, stepping takes place between, effectively, parallel worlds. The more adept at the practice can step not just into the adjacent world but choose ‘where’ they go. The worlds are real enough but one can step between them through changing where one is in one’s consciousness.

Does that not sound very much like the Law of Attraction?

There are many ways of looking at a given situation: we can choose to focus on the things that get us down and stay stuck in that reality, or we can focus on the positive potentials for change and, by putting our consciousness and energy into that reality we can, so the theory goes, bring it about. We might also call it ‘mind over matter’, ‘positive thinking’ or manifesting. In essence all these ideas come from the same principal: that consciousness is primary. That what we focus on in our minds creates our physical reality. Given that even the densest materials (e.g. Lead) are, at the sub-atomic level, largely energy and space, and our thoughts are also energy and space, it doesn’t seem unreasonable that one can morph into the other!

Another important underlying idea is that time and space are so closely connected that they cannot be separated. We even talk about time-space as one quantity. Take that with the Higgs field which (according to quantum theory and recently proven experimentally) connects all points in space, and the idea that we can, at any point in time-space, instantaneously be at any other point in time and space and what do you have?

You have the ability to perform all manner of what are often called paranormal, psychic or unusual abilities. However, as we often say in this site, these are all perfectly normal and natural when we acknowledge the above principles.

For example, on a regular basis as a Reiki healer, I’ll ‘send’ healing to friends, family or clients elsewhere on planet Earth. I’ll take my mind to them, wherever they happen to be, and enable whatever healing is appropriate. In Long Earth terms, I step over to them in my consciousness and am thus present with them to affect a healing. In doing so I will, to some extent, if they’re open to it, have stepped into their consciousness and be able to tune-into any energetic feelings of relevance to the healing session. In a similar way, Joshua, our intrepid Long Earth explorer, often felt, very strongly, when something was wrong somewhere in the string of planets.

Is this all fiction, meta-physics or physics? Why insist on making the distinction! Doesn’t one inform or suggest the other?