The Egg

You were on your way home when you died.
It was a car accident. Nothing particularly remarkable, but fatal nonetheless. You left behind a wife and two children. It was a painless death. The EMTs tried their best to save you, but to no avail. Your body was so utterly shattered you were better off, trust me.
And that’s when you met me.
“What… what happened?” You asked. “Where am I?”
“You died,” I said, matter-of-factly. No point in mincing words.
“There was a… a truck and it was skidding…”
“Yup,” I said.
“I… I died?”
“Yup. But don’t feel bad about it. Everyone dies,” I said.
You looked around. There was nothingness. Just you and me. “What is this place?” You asked. “Is this the afterlife?”
“More or less,” I said.
“Are you god?” You asked.
“Yup,” I replied. “I’m God.”
“My kids… my wife,” you said.
“What about them?”
“Will they be all right?”
“That’s what I like to see,” I said. “You just died and your main concern is for your family. That’s good stuff right there.”
You looked at me with fascination. To you, I didn’t look like God. I just looked like some man. Or possibly a woman. Some vague authority figure, maybe. More of a grammar school teacher than the almighty.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “They’ll be fine. Your kids will remember you as perfect in every way. They didn’t have time to grow contempt for you. You wife will cry on the outside, but will be secretly relieved. To be fair, your marriage was falling apart. If it’s any consolation, she’ll feel very guilty for feeling relieved.”
“Oh,” you said. “So what happens now? Do I go to heaven or hell or something?”
“Neither,” I said. “You’ll be reincarnated.”
“Ah,” you said. “So the Hindus were right,”
“All religions are right in their own way,” I said. “Walk with me.”
You followed along as we strode through the void. “Where are we going?”
“Nowhere in particular,” I said. “It’s just nice to walk while we talk.”
“So what’s the point, then?” You asked. “When I get reborn, I’ll just be a blank slate, right? A baby. So all my experiences and everything I did in this life won’t matter.”
“Not so!” I said. “You have within you all the knowledge and experiences of all your past lives. You just don’t remember them right now.”
I stopped walking and took you by the shoulders. “Your soul is more magnificent, beautiful, and gigantic than you can possibly imagine. A human mind can only contain a tiny fraction of what you are. It’s like sticking your finger in a glass of water to see if it’s hot or cold. You put a tiny part of yourself into the vessel, and when you bring it back out, you’ve gained all the experiences it had.
“You’ve been in a human for the last 48 years, so you haven’t stretched out yet and felt the rest of your immense consciousness. If we hung out here for long enough, you’d start remembering everything. But there’s no point to doing that between each life.”
“How many times have I been reincarnated, then?”
“Oh lots. Lots and lots. An in to lots of different lives.” I said. “This time around, you’ll be a Chinese peasant girl in 540 AD.”
“Wait, what?” You stammered. “You’re sending me back in time?”
“Well, I guess technically. Time, as you know it, only exists in your universe. Things are different where I come from.”
“Where you come from?” You said.
“Oh sure,” I explained “I come from somewhere. Somewhere else. And there are others like me. I know you’ll want to know what it’s like there, but honestly you wouldn’t understand.”
“Oh,” you said, a little let down. “But wait. If I get reincarnated to other places in time, I could have interacted with myself at some point.”
“Sure. Happens all the time. And with both lives only aware of their own lifespan you don’t even know it’s happening.”
“So what’s the point of it all?”
“Seriously?” I asked. “Seriously? You’re asking me for the meaning of life? Isn’t that a little stereotypical?”
“Well it’s a reasonable question,” you persisted.
I looked you in the eye. “The meaning of life, the reason I made this whole universe, is for you to mature.”
“You mean mankind? You want us to mature?”
“No, just you. I made this whole universe for you. With each new life you grow and mature and become a larger and greater intellect.”
“Just me? What about everyone else?”
“There is no one else,” I said. “In this universe, there’s just you and me.”
You stared blankly at me. “But all the people on earth…”
“All you. Different incarnations of you.”
“Wait. I’m everyone!?”
“Now you’re getting it,” I said, with a congratulatory slap on the back.
“I’m every human being who ever lived?”
“Or who will ever live, yes.”
“I’m Abraham Lincoln?”
“And you’re John Wilkes Booth, too,” I added.
“I’m Hitler?” You said, appalled.
“And you’re the millions he killed.”
“I’m Jesus?”
“And you’re everyone who followed him.”
You fell silent.
“Every time you victimized someone,” I said, “you were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you’ve done, you’ve done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by you.”
You thought for a long time.
“Why?” You asked me. “Why do all this?”
“Because someday, you will become like me. Because that’s what you are. You’re one of my kind. You’re my child.”
“Whoa,” you said, incredulous. “You mean I’m a god?”
“No. Not yet. You’re a fetus. You’re still growing. Once you’ve lived every human life throughout all time, you will have grown enough to be born.”
“So the whole universe,” you said, “it’s just…”
“An egg.” I answered. “Now it’s time for you to move on to your next life.”
And I sent you on your way.

There's a few things to be said about this story. It's interesting to me in a meta-philosophical way as well as the implications on the true scope of the universe. I see things differently as an artist of sorts and this existence seems deeper than this story gives.

The one thing that struck me as odd in this story is the concept of time. There is some adaptation of God's that allows him existence outside it. However, we are at the same time subjected to a maturing process unto which our maturation gives us divinity. This is expressed through multiple manifestations of our existence through an indeterminate timeline of existence. Yet time must elapse?

This story reminds me of The Doctor.

Short order, he is a master of time using an advanced technology to travel through time and space. As far as the fandom is concerned he is potentially immortal. He goes through time experiencing events as a bystander. That is his only pursuit across time (or rather outside of it within the Tardis). He is compelled to observe first-hand the innovations and mysteries of the past.

There are themes throughout this saga that give us poignant moments of time travel and its implications. At the same time The Doctor, being the last of his kind known as Time Lords, he is something more than human. He is sometimes referred to, throughout his galactic and seemingly infinite time traveling, as the Lonely God.

There was one thing about this story that made me wonder...that was time. The Doctor is a master of time. He can travel to any point he so desires. He was asked by a nemesis, a likely betrayer of a time-old pact called the Shadow Proclamation, why he didn't undo it?

Undo what? The destruction of his kind. The idea itself is questionable only under the assumption it would change the world for the worse. The Doctor seemed quite fond of humans and their history, implying a kindred bond. It was the undoing of his people that allowed for our existence.

In this story we are within some dream world. This dream world is simply a reflection of ourselves throughout an infinitely long timeline. God says this thing which we experience allows us to mature over a period of time, time which we experience only outside the dream world or possibly concurrently within the dream world.

At what point does our maturation allow us divinity? Is it within some truth of our existence?
How many times must we live through agony?
How long?

Why not dream into existence the point which we become divine?

Parallel worlds offer interesting compromises between these two ideas. The Doctors choice was his own, but in some parallel world he made the choice to go back. Yet if he did then decide to go back, he would alter his own existence. The Doctor is supposedly one of the oldest things in existence. If he time travels to undo the destruction of his kind the fabric of his own world would be brought back into existence. Doing this would create another parallel world where he didn't do this and its existence would still bring about humans.

As for this story, this implies we are God as well. We may even be the subconscious of his own mind, while he is the subconscious within ours. This gives the question of what is truly evil? Every choice creates an outcome, but your perspective on it is always different. You play both victim and criminal, defendant and jury, and every single point in existence.

If this existence is some machine that can calculate infinite probable existences, why not dream the point you become a God, so therefore you are an original new god as God seemingly wants? In an alternate world within this infinite probability machine this would have occurred at some point, thus freeing us from the timeline as we are all this single consciousness spread throughout time.

What if, then, we are within a probability of existence that failed? A singular point in which we somehow become absolutely the wrong thing. We truly sin against some higher divine law. Would not the whole system collapse? This promotes a contest of whether existence is guided toward sovereignty or certain destruction.

This is why I think time is more than time. It may only be a phenomenon which humans can perceive. But again this idea is still only half-baked.