Of all the people I thought I’d meet, I never thought I’d meet myself. Growing up, I wasn’t aware meeting myself was a possibility. I didn’t give it a second thought. I went about my life, making friends with others, as one does. Imagine my surprise when I met myself on my 50th birthday.
Virtual Reality had been around since I was in my mid-20s. It was nothing new. I was well-versed and a little sceptical. What started as fun began to grow and grow. Since the discovery of the grand-unified theory of physics in 2026, increasing numbers of scientific studies discovered our minds react to VR just as we do the Quantum Hologram (“ordinary reality” pre-2026, of course).
Since the Quantum Hologram Revolution of 2027, VR took on a new edge. Knowing all of our reality is an illusion projected by the mind causes a mixture of joy, empowerment, fear, insecurity, and resistance. For the spiritually inclined, QHR was confirmation humans were microcosms of the creative cosmic force of evolution.
The Consensus Reality Summit of 2030 approved the use of VR for spiritual growth and personal development. Post-capitalism’s sacred economics had all but nullified the need for money-oriented greed. The Hunger Project had reached its goal. With a transformed relationship to Mother Earth and material comfort for all, the world’s population was focused on self-actualisation, collaboration and compassion.
Globally, we’d reached the top rung of Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs — self-transcendence. VR assisted the process by catalysing deep spiritual work.
VR changed significantly with the QHR due to the discovery of Quantum Fields of Imagination — the meeting point of mind and matter. The human imagination was the creative force. The moment VR was able to “hack” this field, things started to change. The virtual wasn’t so virtual anymore.
Wednesday 1st August 2040
I had therapy numerous times over the course of my life. It worked, to varying degrees. I’d struggled with self-compassion; at times I’d feel great ease, others I’d fall into patterns of self-criticism and, at worst, self-hate. This form of therapy was different. There was no therapist. Or in a way there was — the therapist was me.
I’d heard a lot about this new form of therapy, mixing meditation, VR and Quantum Fields of Imagination. There was one VR-healing centre in Berlin. As is standard for reaching the quarter-life point, my birthday gift from the Berlin Self-Actualisation Project was a one-hour session — of conceptual linear time, at least. The Quantum Field is free from space-time. An hour’s therapy lasts for as long as you need it to.
There’ve been stories of some who have stayed in therapy for years, negotiating, fighting, and eventually bonding with themselves.
May you be happy, may you be well
How it works is like this: you enter a room, well-lit, face-to-face chairs in the centre. Everything is white, including the chairs. It’s not so-much sterile in a clinical way, but the technological whiteness of those old Apple computers. A silicone VR-receiver is placed on your temples. The VR feed intertwines with your brain’s senses; the visual cortex, the auditory cortex, etc.
It begins with a loving kindness meditation, metta bhavana in Buddhism. The meditation starts by imagining a bright, white light, filled with love and compassion. You imagine this white light filling your body, filling you with love. You may repeat a mantra: “May you be happy, may you be well, may you be loved.”
As you do this, you imagine an image of yourself sat in the chair opposite you in your mind’s eye. As vivid and as vibrant as you can. Then — magic. VR takes over, transmitting the Quantum Field of Imagination into the Quantum Hologram (base-level reality). You open your eyes. There you are.
An algorithm encoded in the soul
Due to the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal of 2018, it was illegal to use or collect algorithms based on behavioural traits or tendencies. Corporations adhered to the Global Ethical Council. Regardless, the technology of VR-Healing wasn’t so much secret, but obscured by heavy jargon, quantum theory and, most difficult to understand, terms and conditions.
Most people assumed VR-Healing Therapy worked by forming an instantaneous feedback-loop of what we imagined ourselves to be; the perception of a projection, the great illusion. Expectation and sensory perception dance together, and as our brains decipher the message, we see ourselves as fully functional, material, holographic.
I knew something was different the moment I saw myself. I knew this was beyond imagination. All the theory I comprehended about the Quantum Imagination Field told me that imagination is a “hacking” of quantum potential. It’s a place residing at the core of existence, before existence manifests.
But as I looked at me, I was struck by presence.
This was a familiar presence. I’d felt this embrace before. I felt this embrace in times of need; the times I questioned my faith. The times I questioned my life.
Engulf by familiarity, a chorus of chills pulsed through my body, evaporating into lightness. A weight I didn’t know was there lifted. Tears fell, too, tears of joy. Unabound joy at being witness to me.
“Hello, Ricky,” Ricky said. He had the appearance of me, that’s for sure. This was for ease of comprehension only; a digestible avatar.
Transversing the universe
What happened next was beyond the comprehension of language. Free from material density or the constraints of time, “me”, Ricky, the Quantum Imagination Field, and the Quantum Hologram merged. This combined, non-dual entity merged again, with memories, with future projections. The past, the present, the future, me, Ricky, imagination, reality… all one.
From this space, we travelled at the speed of non-locality, able to transverse from one side of the universe to the other in an instant, from past to future to future’s past.
Then I was there. As the observer. In my mother’s arms, carried to bed. Then I was there. As the observer. Through my teenage angst and pain. Then I was there. As the observer. The time I wanted to end my life, when I felt the presence for the first time, unfamiliar and unknown, yet guiding me away from the darkness, reaching out a hand of knowing.
Through the pain and suffering and psychosis and self-doubt and confusion and feeling of giving up. Through the heartache and loneliness and sadness and despair. Through the pointlessness of it all the disenchantment the “fuck it” I’m trying my best but getting nowhere.
Through it all, I saw. I saw and I felt and knew I was never alone, ever.
The pieces of the jigsaw, an effortless fit, everything making sense, sense being the truth beyond man-made confusion.
We returned to our meeting point, the two of us opposite, life coursing through my veins, a force beyond all constraints, exhilarating yet grounded, supported and free to soar.
I was ready to ask me the question.
“Show me who I really am,” I said, as the chorus of chills braced for a crescendo, the sense of anticipation like listening to a song you know and love.
Ricky smiled.
As Ricky’s form shifted I saw, but lucidity was with feeling. What seemed material, of the flesh, started to vibrate. Quicker and quicker, his appearance flickered. As he continued to smile, he became more and more transparent.
With increased transparency came increased brightness, light encoded with information, the DNA and building blocks of consciousness, the information was love, a blinding, unfathomable love, brighter than any brightness perceived by the senses.
This was a quantum manifestation of the light of loving kindness I’d visualised. I melted in its presence, as “I” ceased to be. Lighter and lighter, brighter and brighter, Ricky was Ricky no more, he spoke but used no words, but I understood.
