We seem to be able to view, with complete detachment, the comings and goings, through space time, of matter and energy in the universe, no matter how complex, strange, or even, unbelievable, those activities are. We accept that they are simply a part of nature, devoid of any self driven agendas or desires. But when we view the comings and goings of conscious human enterprise, such detachment seems impossible, as we believe that our conscious activities through space time constitutes a special case, replete with choice, plans, and meaning.

Beyond Einstein, the results of  Young’s ‘double slit’ experiment, coupled with the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, have shown us that this is not a simple ‘clockwork’ universe, whose state changes through time can be predicted with perfect accuracy. The paths of the elementary particles that make up our universe can not be accurately described, though we know both the beginning and ending point of the journey. Indeed, should we observe a particle at some intermediary point in its journey, by using one means of detection or another, its very nature will be inexorably altered.

Though we can not make predictions about any single particle, our physics allows us to make accurate predictions regarding the behavior of large numbers of such particles. And so it would seem that these particles, and by extension, all of the inanimate matter and energy of the universe, are governed by forces and laws that ultimately rule and govern the movement and fate of these very particles, just as surely as iron is drawn to a magnet. So why do the activities and outcomes that pertain to conscious human activity appear to be of a different nature entirely?

Whether or not a particle can ‘observe’ itself, and its immediate surroundings, the forces of nature will lead it, ineluctably, to its fate. We, on the other hand, having the ability to observe our surroundings, appear to possess choices, whose unpredictable outcomes, if they follow rules at all, seem to imbue us with a free will that no other matter or energy in the entirety of our universe possesses. In the antIs universe of our experience, we, alone as observers, have choice, while everything else dances to Einsteins’ famous “mysterious tune”. To be clear, Einstein believed that everything is determined, for Human beings, vegetables, and cosmic dust alike. But this belief is the exception for Human beings, who overwhelmingly experience the present as a field of action upon which it is possible to manipulate the outcome of events in an unknown future. In fact John Wheeler has proposed that actions in the present will manipulate the outcome of events in the past as well.

It does seem strange though, that only this portion of matter in the universe, ‘biological’ in nature, and of a minuscule quantity, approaching a magnitude of naught, has the seeming ability to control and override the laws of cause and effect, when all else in the universe must follow them. It is also telling that this situation appears to be true only from our ‘observers’ perspective, that is, our antIs perspective. We are special because we experience ourselves as special. However, as described in TotIs, the necessity to experience our reality through a ‘now’ moment is the alpha and omega of the field of free will, and as Einstein quipped, is but an illusion. The difficulty in piercing this illusion lies in the constant conflation of antIs and totIs reality as equivalent when they are not. In the following analogy I will attempt to illustrate how antIs reality exists as a dependent structure within the prime reality defined as totIs.

To begin we must first set up the analogy using an object that will carry the most important attribute of totIs reality as described in TotIs, that is: A universe created ‘outside’ of time, where no ‘now’ exists and where its beginning and its end exist simultaneously, along with everything ‘in between’. To clarify, from our antIs perspective, all matter, energy, space and time, including every yesterday and every tomorrow, exist simultaneously, from beginning to end.

So now, imagine this totIs universe is a 16 mm film, spooled on a reel and packed in its can. Both the beginning and the end of the film exist simultaneously. Indeed every part of the film exists simultaneously. This film is made of a number of elementary building blocks which combine in a myriad of ways. Now imagine that among the various elements and compounds that make up this film are small bits of bio-matter that are formed into self aware material. A small piece of the entire film can now experience itself as existing at discrete points along an arbitrary continuum. In totIs reality, this bio-matter, along with the entire film, simply IS, simultaneously. However, the picture of reality this bio-matter now experiences, via the lens of its senses and fabricated ‘now’ moment, becomes a scene of movement defined by changing states of matter and energy. For the film in the can nothing changes. The film is All, Unified, One, the Source. Even ‘nothing’ is in the can, for nothing is a consequence of being. For the film, being is ‘absolute’, what is, IS, there is no ‘was’ or ‘will be’. There also exists no ‘outside of the can’ because ‘non-being’ is, likewise, absolute; What is-not, IS-NOT. For this bio-matter, at its shifting ‘now’ position within the film, its experience of reality, for all intents and purposes, IS reality. This bio-matter and its observations are perpetually limited to discrete points along the film as they come in and out of focus through the ‘now’ lens, an experience replete with a past and a future that lay always beyond its reach. For this bio-matter, reality is played out in ‘time’ as the consecutive frames of the movie. Through the phenomenon of its observer status, what is unified in totIs appears fragmented and separate via this bio-matter’s antIs perceptual platform.

This analogy helps us place antIs reality, created by the interpretation of our bio-sensory systems interaction with totIs reality, into the maximal framework of the totIs universe itself while revealing its dependent status. We can do this because of our understanding that this product of our bio-sensory system is absolute. It is a 100% interpretation of totIs reality, which includes our experience of both space and time as well. The absolute nature of antIs reality means it is completely self-referential. We verify the veracity of antIs reality using the circular logic embedded in antIs reality’s absolute, or ’perfect’, illusion. It is reality because it’s the only reality we can know. It is more real to us than totIs reality, which we can not access as consciousness. We can also see, using this analogy, that antIs reality is both unified within totIs reality, and yet this antIs perspective creates the illusion of separation where none exists in totIs. This is the source of our constant and inevitable ‘anthropomorphism’ of reality, along with the notion that things like choice and free-will exists for us in reality.

I began this essay with the question of why we can accept that the vast bulk of the universe follows laws that determine both state and state change while, for a minuscule portion of the universe, that is, conscious biological life, there appears to be an escape hatch from such a fate in the form of choice and free will. Using the aforementioned analogy and our understanding of the distinction between totIs and antIs reality, we are able to place ourselves and the fact of an antIs perspective within the ‘body’ of a unified totIs universe. Through this exercise we come to see that the existence of choice and free-will is a function of the antIs perspective alone, it is not an attribute of totIs reality. Though our antIs minds rebel at the thought that from birth to death our every breath is counted, such a journey is no less complicated, from an antIs perspective, than the path of a hydrogen atom moving through the immense expanse of space time to its final denouement in the center of a star. The difference, for us, between the two journeys, is consciousness. Given the aforementioned analogy, the only place consciousness can be said to exist is in the interpreted antIs reality of our bio-sensory system. It is the observer of that reality and exists hand in glove with antIs reality itself.

All of this might appear to be merely an academic, indeed, a sophomoric exercise but for a number of important scientists who believe that, as Einstein so succinctly put it “reality is merely an illusion, albeit, a persistent one.” Relativity, and the dilemma it uncovered, exemplified by this ‘persistent illusion’ between the way space time works as opposed to the way we experience it, re-ignited the age old questions regarding determinism vs free-will. but the source of the illusion and its persistence remained hidden. Now, with the understanding, from TotIs, of the nature of the bio-sensory creation of an antIs reality, along with its simultaneous conscious observer, we have the source of the illusion and the reason for its persistence, as well as the framework of a totIs universe within which the ingredients for the creation of an antIs reality are contained. The fact that the antIs experience of reality seems so completely real, as it is experienced by the conscious observer, speaks directly to the persistence of the illusion. It is one thing to accept that fully 100% of our experience of reality is created by our bio-sensory apparatus, but quite another to accept it as an illusion. If we stop to think about how our experience of the world as ‘out there’, is 100% constructed ‘in here’, from within our brains, we have to admit that something doesn’t add up. That tree we see across the riverbank is an image that is completely constructed in our brains via electro-chemical means. If we walk up to the tree and put hand to bark, that feeling is, likewise, completely constructed in our brains. Absolutely every experience of reality we have is the product of a bio-sensory system that manufactures and delivers, to us, an experience we call ‘the world out there’, yet, is 100% contained within our central nervous system itself; absolutely every experience, including our experience of space and time as well. In TotIs, the shortcomings and flaws with and within this system are detailed with an eye toward showing this product to be equivalent to an illusion. But in this case, where we believe that this bio-sensory experience  is actually reality, it is defined as a ‘perfect’ illusion. The ‘viewer’ has no inkling that it could even be an illusion, it is taken for truth itself, thus sustaining its persistence while we, as observers, remain functionally disconnected from the actual nature of the totIs universe within which we exist. That nature, as source, unites and determines everything, including us, and our antIs reality, within it.