I don’t know about this. I feel like I’m walking toward a cliff. A voice inside me is saying, “Turn around,” while another voice is telling me to jump. It’s telling me to trust that something will brace me from the impact of the fall. But maybe I’m supposed to hit the ground hard. Maybe that’s my fate. Either way, my decision to start this podcast might change everything. It might change the course of my life, for better or worse. And this part might sound crazy, but this decision could also change the course of humanity. That’s my intention anyway.
You may not believe any of what I’m about to tell you. I honestly don’t know if I believe it. All I know is that everything changed last Sunday morning.
It started like any other morning: I woke up. I went downstairs. I walked into the kitchen to make myself some breakfast. And that’s where the normal part ended.
On the kitchen table lay my journal and a pen. I opened the journal to the bookmarked page and found there written a letter addressed to me in a handwriting I didn’t recognize. When my half-awake brain realized that someone had been in my kitchen, writing a letter in my journal, my heart raced at the thought that the writer might still be in the house. I looked around to see if anyone was there, and when I was satisfied I was alone, I sat down to read the letter. This is what it said:
Dear Adam,
My name is Edgar Fleming, and I’m a quantum neuroscientist from the year 2153. More importantly, I am your reincarnated consciousness in the next life. After your death, many years from now, humanity finds itself off course, and that is why I am writing you this letter.
The world I live in is one where humanity has become a shell of what it once was. Reason and responsibility have been surrendered to comfort and complacency. The population passively follows the direction of a totalitarian world government that decides what we read, what we watch, what we wear, what we say, and what we do. The vast majority of individuals fear thinking for themselves or making a decision for which they can be held accountable. They have forfeited their free will in favor of letting their authoritarian caretakers decide what is best for them. Individuals who defy the dictates of the government are ostracized by their family and friends, and dissent is punishable with a prison sentence that includes many years of what is termed “rehabilitation.”
I don’t know which prison is worse: the prison of living in a totalitarian society or the actual prison within such a society. I am thankful I found a way to avoid both in my life as I live in a community where individuals still believe in the power of the human mind. Our mission has been to preserve and cultivate the creations of human thought in all forms, including art, literature, music, and film. We have also preserved the entirety of the internet as it existed nearly 100 years ago, when it included more than only government-sponsored content.
My main responsibility within this free community is to develop methods for restoring free-thinking human consciousness. We hope to one day be able to restore the ability of individuals to think for themselves, which in our experience, has been a difficult task. The human mind does not easily recover from a lifetime of cognitive oppression.
Through my work on restoring consciousness, I have developed mechanisms to increase activity in parts of the brain that have not been adequately developed. Through a combination of brain stimulation and targeted cognitive exercises, we have been able to see tremendous progress in restoring the ability of the human mind to think for itself. Despite these advances, however, there has not yet been a full recovery of the mind to that of a free-thinking individual.
I hypothesized that the only possible means of restoring the full capacity of the mind was to turn back the clock within the brain. If I could turn back consciousness to an earlier point in one’s life and develop free-thinking cognition from that point forward, then it might be possible to fully restore the mind. After years of experiments, I created a device that allows one to travel back through one’s own consciousness and rebuild the cognitive processes that regulate free will.
Through these experiments, I have demonstrated that consciousness exists beyond the bounds of time and space. As we live our lives, it is our consciousness that creates the illusion of time and space to make sense of our reality. Without the mind’s perception, all your conscious experiences, past, present, and future, exist as one. Essentially, I have devised a technology to shift our perception of time and space to specific moments in our past. This device can move our consciousness to any point in our past, so we can relive those moments as a present reality and even change our thoughts and behaviors in that past reality, thus creating a new and different future reality upon our return.
I realized that such technology has powerful and dangerous implications. Even a small change in the past could bring about unintended consequences that could have profound effects on the future. Because of this danger, I have not used the device on anyone other than myself, and I have not shared details of the technology with anyone.
In my initial testing of the device, I avoided making any changes to my past. I simply behaved as a passive observer of various moments in my life. It was astounding to relive childhood experiences that I had seemingly forgotten and look at them anew through the lens of my current consciousness.
During one of these experiences, I went back to my eight-year-old self, to the time when my father, a medical doctor, was taken to a rehabilitation camp. They came for him in the middle of the night. When they pounded on the door, my mother told me to stay in bed, but I crept out to the hallway and peered around the corner as they handcuffed my father and took him away. That was the last time I saw him. His crime was defying the prevailing viewpoint that intense emotional states, whether negative or positive, were medical conditions that required treatment in order to prevent long-term health complications. Instead of following protocol, he had dissuaded his patients from using drug therapies and explained to them that such feelings were a normal part of the human experience.
In another phase of my testing of the device, I investigated whether or not it was possible to change the past. Although it was tempting to try to change events like my father’s arrest, I knew the ramifications would be unpredictable and lead to unintended consequences. In order to mitigate this risk, I decided to change the past in the most benign way I could think of, so I went back to my consciousness a week prior and moved one of my books to another place on my bookshelf. Upon my return, the book was in its new location. I then did another test where I went back two days and baked a loaf of bread. When I returned, not only did I find a half-eaten loaf of bread in the breadbox, I also had new memories of eating the bread over the course of those two days. This experiment demonstrated that not only is it possible to change the past, it is also possible to have new past memories upon returning to an altered future.
One night, when I awoke from a dream, I realized that I hadn’t yet explored the full possibility of traveling back through one’s consciousness since I had not attempted traveling back to a time before one’s birth. The implications of this experiment were profound as it could literally prove whether or not consciousness exists beyond life. Even though I knew I would not be able to share this experience with anyone, since I couldn’t tell anyone about the device, I felt an obligation to attempt the journey anyway in order to get a definitive answer to a question that humanity has contemplated since the dawn of human thought. I configured the device to take my consciousness back to one year prior to my birth. I honestly didn’t expect anything to happen, but I was completely wrong.
During this experiment, my consciousness returned to an indescribable realm outside of both time and space—an existence in between lives. It is difficult to put into words what it is like to be conscious without form. My consciousness was expansive and interconnected with other conscious beings, each of us existing as unique frequencies of light. Among these beings of light, I found myself under guidance as I prepared for my reincarnation into my current life. They were counseling me on how to plan my life to fulfill its purpose. Part of this process included reviewing my previous life—the one in which you find yourself reading this letter—although in that version of your life, you never received this letter.
You see, everything changed during the preparation for my current life. The beings with whom I consulted had determined that humanity had fallen off course. A great awakening of consciousness was planned to occur in your lifetime but never took place. Instead of the dawning of an age of conscious enlightenment, humanity fell into a spiral of decay. The concern among these beings was that human consciousness itself was at risk, and the ability to reincarnate into future lives may be lost.
A course correction was necessary. The plan for my life changed. It was determined that it would be too late to attempt to change things during my lifetime; therefore, the only option was to change the past. Rather than only planning out my current life, it was decided that I would go back and set into motion a plan to change the course of humanity through my past life, through your life.
My new life plan shifted toward gaining the knowledge and ability to travel back to my past life as you and share with you vital information that will hopefully save human consciousness from self-destruction. This plan included my journeying back to this realm between lives, where I would consciously learn about the plan and the information I would need to give to you to save humanity. It is through a series of letters, the first of which you are reading now, that I will share with you the information—specifically five rituals—that will shape the future of humanity. It is up to you to find a way to disseminate this information to as many people as possible in order to steer humanity back in the right direction.
I should note that while I learned about the entirety of the previous version of your life—the one that existed without my communicating with you—I do not know exactly how your life will unfold in this new version of reality we are creating. We are in uncharted territory, changing the direction of your life, my life, and every other human life, now and into the future, hopefully for the better.
I know that your current job involves helping others improve their health, and while that’s technically what you’ll still be doing, you’re going to be doing it on a much more profound level. As you share this information, these letters and the five rituals with the world, you will be facilitating the development of human consciousness and correcting the course of humanity. There is no guarantee this plan will work, but you must do everything you can to share this message with your world.
I will write you each of these letters at night while you sleep. It is my understanding that the future I return to will exist on a new branch of reality, and the old branch will no longer exist. As a result, my life will be different, but to what extent I do not know. Each subsequent journey to the past, to your life, will create another new branch in place of the old branch. I can only travel back in time on the same branch from which I depart, but when I travel forward to return to my regular existence, I travel on the new branch that I created by changing the past. Navigating these branches will be how we’ll work together to guide humanity in the right direction, using feedback from the future on whether or not our actions are having the intended consequences.
I will provide instructions for the first of the five rituals in the next letter I write you. For now, I need you to share this letter with your world to let people know what is at stake. Only by sharing this information and practicing the five rituals on a global scale can we hope to restore the full potential of human consciousness.
I can only imagine how this must all sound, but please do realize that the fate of humanity rests on your shoulders. I have seen in the previous version of your life that you exhibit a great deal of courage and determination to fulfill your life’s purpose. I have confidence that you will bring those same traits to this new version of your life, and I will do my best to help you in every way I can.
Please share this letter with your world, and I’ll write again soon with further instructions.
Yours, truly,
Edgar
It’s been five days since I first read that letter, and I’m still having a hard time wrapping my head around it. When you first read a letter from your reincarnated future self, you immediately think it’s a joke or a prank. The last thing you can imagine is that it’s real. As the days pass, you start to think other things. You start to question your own mind.
I keep asking myself the same questions. Is this real? Am I going crazy? Is the fate of humanity really on my shoulders? Can I handle such a responsibility? What is everyone going to think? Even if this is real, no one is going to believe me. How can this possibly work? How could I possibly get this message out to the whole world? And why in the world was I chosen to do this?
I haven’t come up with any answers yet, but my mind is too preoccupied to think of much else. If I didn’t have to worry about these things, I would be spending my time thinking about how awesome it is to be communicating with my reincarnated future self. I mean how amazing is that? As it turns out, it’s too amazing. It’s too much for me to process. On one hand, the fate of the world might depend on me. On the other hand, I might be losing my mind. I don’t know which pill is easier to swallow.
And who knows what you’re thinking? I’m having a hard enough time understanding any of this myself, and if I can’t believe it, how can I expect you to believe it?
You might be wondering who I am—this person who apparently has a world-changing message to share with you. There’s really not all that much to say about myself. My name is Adam Weiss. I’m 33 years old and work as a clinical nutritionist at a small hospital in Ohio.
Edgar is right that my work involves helping others improve their health, though to be honest, I’m not sure how well I’ve been doing that. Every day, I’m faced with two choices when counseling my patients—do I tell them what I really think would improve their health, or do I play it by the book and tell them the conventional approach that probably isn’t going to do them much good? I usually choose the latter. It’s the easy route and it keeps me employed.
I think it’s pretty common knowledge that the field of nutrition is home to a lot of bad science. Despite this, we all keep playing the same broken game by the same broken rules. Maybe there are still people out there who believe in the conventional model, or maybe those people have just benefited so much from it that they have no incentive to consider changing. Then there are people like me who know better but still follow convention because we are too afraid to challenge it.
I admire Edgar’s father for having the courage to stand up for what was right, no matter the cost. If the world had more people like him, it may not have ended up in the tragic state that Edgar described. I’m afraid the way I’ve been doing my job is more in line with that of the blind followers of the future who cede all their decision-making to the government. I avoid defying convention and doing what I think is best for my patients simply because I don’t want to risk my job or reputation. My patients see me in my white lab coat and trust my recommendations, but in my mind, I know I’m letting them down. Maybe now it’s time for me to demonstrate some courage by releasing this podcast.
That begs the question: Is releasing this podcast courageous or just crazy? Maybe there’s a fine line separating the two. I don’t know if there’s anything I can say to convince you that I’m not crazy, especially when I’m having such a hard time convincing myself. I don’t have a history of mental illness; I’ve been pretty mentally stable my whole life.
I am an introvert who enjoys solitude, so the last thing I’m looking for is attention. On the contrary, I go out of my way to avoid attention, so I feel like I’m the wrong choice for getting a message out to the whole world. I don’t have thousands of followers on social media, nor do I have any other connections that would make it easy for me to reach a lot of people. I’ve structured my life in a way that limits my exposure to the world. Nevertheless, now it’s time to put myself out there.
In my first attempt at recording this podcast, I tried to just speak off the cuff. It was terrible. I’m not very good at talking about things off the top of my head, and even if I was good at speaking extemporaneously, it probably isn’t the best approach with the fate of the world hanging in the balance. I want to be careful with my words and make sure I say everything that needs to be said. In the end, I settled on writing a script, and that’s what I’m reading to you now.
I honestly don’t know if I’m doing this the right way or saying the right words. I guess you never know for certain the right thing to say or do in any particular moment. Sometimes the only thing that is clear is that you have to say or do something. I tend to be a perfectionist and want everything I do to be done without flaw. It often results in me not doing things and not taking risks. I have to overcome that fear, and release this podcast, knowing that it won’t be perfect but that it is the right thing to do.
Anyway, despite being an introvert and a perfectionist, I think I’m pretty normal, at least until I received that letter. I don’t think normal is a word I can use anymore, crazy or not.
I don’t think you would have to be a crazy person to concede that humanity might be on course toward self-destruction. We’ve had some ugly moments in recent history, and it seems like things are changing at an accelerating pace. Technologies like the internet and the smartphone allow us to communicate with each other in profound ways, all the while making us less connected. Maybe we are more connected on a superficial level, but true connection at a deeper level is harder to come by. That lack of connection may be part of the reason why in recent years we’re seeing escalating rates of depression and suicide. We seem to be losing a vital part of our humanity, which may very well lead us toward a world like Edgar’s.
I can see how even now people are resigning their free will out of fear of standing up for what they believe in. I’m certainly not innocent in that regard. So many of us are just going through the motions in life. We work jobs we don’t really like and spend our free time mindlessly watching TV or surfing the internet. If the most important decision we have to make each day is what to watch on television, there isn’t much opportunity for improving ourselves and making the world a better place. Maybe there is a part of us that wants the future that Edgar describes. Maybe we’re not too far from that reality.
I can see the appeal of living in Edgar’s world. On the surface, having all your decisions made for you and not having to take responsibility for anything seems kind of nice. It’s kind of like the appeal of relaxing on a tropical beach while on vacation. It sounds nice in the short term, but can you imagine doing that every single day of your life? There comes a point when you want your life to be productive—to have a purpose and meaning. Without responsibility for something, what’s the point? There might be less pain and suffering, but there’s also less reward. You aren’t striving toward anything, and there’s nothing to push you forward. It is the kind of existence that could drive a person mad, unless, of course, you never knew any better.
Maybe if that part of your consciousness never developed, as Edgar described, maybe you’d just be a docile victim of such a society. I’m afraid there are already too many of us living a mindless existence like that. But it’s not because we don’t know any better. We know we could do more with our lives, but we choose not to. Why? I for one can’t figure it out, but maybe that’s what Edgar’s future letters will help us uncover.
It’s hard for me to fathom what I will be sharing from future letters that could possibly set humanity back on course, but I’m eager to find out. Let’s just hope it doesn’t involve human sacrifice or anything crazy like that. Seriously, if it does involve human sacrifice, I promise I’ll end the podcast and check myself into a mental hospital. I’m pretty certain, though, that the path toward an age of enlightenment won’t require anything like that. What it does require, well, your guess is as good as mine.
By the way, I assumed this letter writing thing would work both ways, so a couple days after I received his letter, I wrote Edgar the following letter for him to find when he returns to write in my journal:
Dear Edgar,
The idea of communicating with my future consciousness in a future life is difficult to grasp. Of course I will follow through with sharing the information you write to me in the letters. It just seems unfathomable that I could have such an impact on the course of humanity. I’ll have to take your word for it and trust you. I don’t think there is any other option.
Sincerely,
Adam
I’m recording this episode on August 31, 2018. I don’t know when, or if, I’ll receive another letter from Edgar, but I’ll be checking my journal every morning until I do. I’ve set up security cameras in my kitchen and living room to record the writing of another letter. I need to rule out the possibility that someone is playing an elaborate hoax on me, so I’ve decided to wait to release this episode until I have confirmation that it is actually my own body writing the letters.
If you’re hearing this, you can assume I’ve confirmed as much. I’ll leave it to you to decide if you think I’m crazy or if this is real. Perhaps it would be best if I am crazy. That would mean that humanity might not be on a fast track toward self-destruction. However, I must operate on the assumption that this is real and follow through with the responsibility of sharing these letters. There’s simply too much at stake, and I’d rather risk public humiliation than risk being the cause of the destruction of humanity. I just hope that, like Edgar said, I have the courage to follow through with the task.
I suppose there are many different possibilities for how things will unfold. I’ve been thinking about how, although I would like to get this podcast out to as many people as possible, there could be just one person who really needs to hear it. Maybe that one person is you. Maybe by listening to this podcast, you change the world, or maybe this podcast will help you set into motion a chain of events throughout the world that you won’t even realize.
It’s also possible that I’ll release this podcast and no one listens. Then maybe, many years from now, when things have gotten bad enough, somebody listens, and at that point, the podcast goes viral and change really does occur.
There are too many possibilities for me to predict right now. I just know that it’s my responsibility to record this and put it out there. If you’re listening to this, I hope you’ll fulfill your part of the plan. Maybe that is to strengthen your own consciousness through practicing the rituals, which might have a great effect on not only you but also the lives of those around you. Or perhaps you are meant to share this podcast with others, so they, too, can learn how to improve their own consciousness and affect those around them.
The more I think about it, the more I truly believe we all have infinite power to change the world. We rarely realize just how powerful we are. I think this is part of the underlying problem that we are trying to solve—people not seizing the power within themselves to change the world. We can’t become complacent and think that changing the world is someone else’s job. We can’t just rely on the government or people with more money or power, nor can we wait for the grand acts of heroes and martyrs. We all, through our daily existence, are changing the world all the time, whether we like it or not. Every action we take has a ripple effect, leading to profound consequences into the future. I can’t know what ripple effect I will cause with this podcast, but I know it is my responsibility to put it out there.
That’s all for now. Please tune in to the next episode and please share this podcast. Even if you think I’m crazy, please share it. I want to get this message out to as many people as possible so they can decide what to make of it themselves. The fate of the world may depend on it.