What if there never really was a Big Bang? What if the Universe was always just as it is right now, this moment and totally independent of time? Only our perception was changing.
It occurred to me that what might have happened is that the consciousness of the universe has actually expanded awareness inward, changing into many apparent but still united places. This has created the impression that the universe has been expanding. Actually, it has only been this changing self awareness that has created the impression of time and space.
In this way, space / time became an artifact of consciousness at a point that now seems to have occurred over “13 billion years” ago. All this appears to have occurred at a small point of space that has since appeared to expand to the full extent of the universe. What may actually have happened is the expansion was a creation of the changing consciousness. This expansion appears to continue to happen.
All the sense “data” we collect is subject to the understanding of a consciousness that interprets it according to its evolving awareness. We are not moving or being moved through space. It is us, our awareness that creates the illusion of movement. Like looking out the window of a moving car, the countryside appears to be whisking past us.
Microscopes, cameras, iPhones all have variable focus. Objects appear to come closer or retreat, depending on the activity of the observer. It is actually the perspective of the observer that is changing, not the object itself. Of course, it is the observer that reports the observation, from their perspective. Objects are said to move closer or farther away.
It seems likely that all sentient beings, humans included, experience time and space in different ways. A fly’s awareness of time and space is probably different from the person attempting to swat it. Even for individual humans, the awareness of time and space comes from a combination of unique genetics and learning.
I think that humans have evolved to experience time and space in a new ways over time. My ancestors 200,000 years ago probably hosted a form of consciousness not exactly the same as mine. The biology of humans has changed, and so has the relationship with consciousness. My own awareness of time and space has changed over the years. I walk through each day with a consciousness that continues to change from what I learned as a youth.
Sciences of the mind and the material world seem to agree that no object is really “there”. It only exists in the relationship between the object and the observer. Quantum physics and buddhism seem to have very similar notions on this issue. If the perspective of the observer, the consciousness shifts, the reality changes. It too shifts. It seems to me that as the awareness, the consciousness embodied in humans changes, so does the reality of space / time.
I look at the ‘now’ of the universe, and my perception of space / time, at this moment, projects the reality created by my subjective observation that reaches back to the ‘beginning of time’ 13 billion years ago. My consciousness touches space / time and becomes aware of an infinitely small, compact origin of all matter that is. That is what is real, to a large extent, because that is what I observe. This is the relationship, the reality that my consciousness creates.
So was there a Big Bang? Yes, and I am here to witness it, fashion it, and be part of it.