Stand back with me and view the painting: the great ocean of thought fills most of the canvas, topped with waves frozen in the now of the painter's brush. The wave patterns are you and I and the material world that we have each created according to our strongest thoughts. Above the ocean the sun shines, throwing our material world into patterns of light and shadow, defining edges and separateness. The sun is our consciousness which reinforces our current view of life.

Just below the materialised waves, the ocean waters are our individual unmaterialised thoughts. If you look very closely you can see the ghostly blueprint of your life: the shape of possible things to come etched by those thoughts which are gathering momentum. Here also our thoughts spread and intermingle with the unmaterialised thoughts of others. Water blends invisibly with water, being both separate and interconnected. Occasionally strong currents of resonating mass thought override and sweep us along in their frenzied rush towards expression of materialised mass consciousness.

At deeper levels in the ocean, where sunlight does not penetrate, our deepest unconscious thoughts merge and unite without interruption from splashing waves, rolling tides or rushing currents. Here, in stillness, we are close to the ocean bed, symbolically perhaps the birthplace of all that we are, as individual thought and as one ocean. Here, far from the sunlight of consciousness, far from our conscious existence as individuals atop an ocean wave, is the mystery of our origin, the true foundation of our being. Here is the unity of original thought.

Yet this painting is no snapshot in time, for time is an illusion. Pay closer attention and you will see the painter wields his brush with miraculous speed, portraying as you watch, the ever-reflecting now. Refocus your eyes and realise the sheer beauty of this painting, for it is not the two dimensional canvas you created with your conditioned mind, but the multidimensional Magic Eye, where what you see depends on your depth of focus. The shape of things to come, the shape of things that are, and the shape of things that were, are everpresent, simply lodged at different focal depths. All past, present and future are here, interchangeable within the blink of an eye.

We return to the focal point of the ever-reflecting now and see that the painting moves! See the rolling of the waves, the crumbling of the old, the birth of the new. See the blueprints intensify and dissolve, ever refining the shape of things to come, the shape of things that are. See the torrents of mass consciousness gather momentum and define the phases and ages of humanity: the domestication of animals, the rise of civilisation, the spread of Christianity, the fear of God, the fear of witches, belief in the Church, belief in science, the fear of communism, the fear of capitalism, the invention of flying machines, belief in racial superiority and so on.

This incredible painting is 'all that is', encapsulated. Pitched at the eye of the ever-reflecting now it appears to move, to record time, yet it is also the stillness of no time. It is all thought. It is you and I as individuals and it is you and I as one whole. Our thoughts create both material form and blueprint possibilities. We are the painting and we are the painter. We are miraculous in ways we cannot consciously comprehend.

The Eastern religions generally see the supreme being, Buddha, the God force, the divine, as an intrinsic part of the universe and the process of life, rather than as a ruler existing outside and looking on. The point of the various Eastern philosophies is to transcend the illusion of individual existence and realise the interconnectedness of all things: the ultimate unity of the universe. The idea is to work towards a state of consciousness which bursts the bubble of illusion. This is enlightenment and it can be seen clearly in our painting as a process of bringing sunlight to shine on the ocean floor, which in turn would reflect throughout the very ocean itself.

Western religion ascribes the creation of the world to a ruling God who is nonetheless omnipresent, all powerful and all knowing. We talk about 'divining' the future, just as we refer to God as being divine, reflecting our Western understanding that God exists beyond time as we know it. He gives us free will, yet our ultimate fate is in his hands. Faith and belief mark the pathway to his door and form our ultimate test, for if we show faith we will reside with God. Now our Western God begins to sound very much like our painting and our painter, which must mean that we are God and God is we. As all thought we are divine and we can divine. Our Western problem is that we have forgotten our divinity.

We have become so deluded by the reality of the material world and the laws which seem to describe it that we have forgotten the umbilical cord which links us to our true self: one unity, one intrinsic creative God, one divinity. Caught up in the belief of the ticking clock notching finite time as we race to find meaning in physical existence, we opt for sculpting our material mark, our individual ego identity, our fingerprints in the world of form because it seems to offer more permanence than the world of thought alone. Have we become so focused on our need to matter that we have created, through the resonating shape and sound of the word, exactly that: a Western view dominated by matter?

And if we occasionally break through our illusion and feel the tug of the umbilical cord which connects us to all that is, are we so overawed by the implications of the experience that we run for the safety zone of denial? How often do we, poor deluded slaves of expectation, bury meaningful or true spiritual experience for fear of the regimented codes of organised religion, the waftiness of New Age spirituality or the medicate-you-back-to-reality psychiatric system? How often do we embrace science and reasoning for the sake of public credibility while dissociating our spiritual experiences through the arts to be safely intellectualised as fantasy, history, fiction, creative expression or philosophy?

How much longer can science protect us from facing spiritual meaning? As we have seen, the arguments provided by modern physics have brought us closer to the spiritual realities described by both Eastern philosophies and Western religion. We find a world where each individual shares responsibility for the world we build through belief, not because the world is the sum of our individual parts, but because the whole is indeed much greater than this. What we think reverberates throughout the whole by resonating with the thoughts of like minded individuals, increasing persuasive power by lending momentum. Resonance grows into the current of mass consciousness which has the power to tip the balance of outward expression, for better or for worse. We carry the responsibility and power of a creative God, but are we also answerable to a higher purpose?

The question of meaning is further compounded by parallel universes which, according to quantum physics, may well exist. If they do, then you, as an individual, exist in multiple variations in an infinite number of alternative universes.

Every subatomic situation, according to quantum physics, has a variety of possible outcomes, each of which already exists. Which outcome seems to occur is determined by the observer, since, according to modern physics, the observer's mind is always a part of the experimental outcome. However, since all possible outcomes exist, then so do all possible variations of the observer's expectations. The observer and the event exist in multiple parallel universes, each one featuring a different expected outcome.

In other words, according to the theory, every decision you have ever taken, and will ever take, exists, as do multiple copies of yourself, each occupying one of the infinite possibilities. Each universe will be different, some minimally so, some unrecognisably so.

Where would your boundaries as an individual lie, if you exist in infinite variations? Some variations would be almost indistinguishable from the you in this universe, and some would be remarkably different, since your material form would reflect your strongest thoughts which, between parallel universes, would be infinitely diverse. Apart from tracing common origins, could you distinguish between variations of yourself and other people? We can apply the same argument to the single universe we call our own and ask how we distinguish ourselves from others if we all share a common basis, a common origin, a common unity, a common divinity.

Some scientists argue that since we consciously sense ourselves as individuals we must not be aware of ourselves in parallel universes, while others argue that occasionally we might. If we did have that occasional awareness, then our parallel universes would overlap in consciousness and we might find ourselves sharing, perhaps, thoughts and synchronicities with these parallel selves. How often might our tuning in with other people be instead a resonance between us and their similar parallel selves? Suddenly infinite parallel universes reunite as one universe, or one 'multiverse' as some scientists have chosen to label totality.

As a child I experienced occasional déjà vu which intrigued me. By the age of ten I decided life was a pathway of options, a bit like a maze in a child's puzzle book, but one which we drew as we go along. Each decision became a junction on our path and wherever we turned right in one life (as I saw it then), we would find ourselves turning left in the next. My déjà vu experiences, I believed, were recognition of pathways previously travelled. The point, as I imagined it, was to ultimately experience all possible combinations of life and then stand in judgement of oneself at the end, richer for the learning. Life was, therefore, a serious game marked by oneself, after which one was ready for whatever came next. Parallel universe theory allows for all this to happen simultaneously. Multiverse theory allows for occasional, mystical experiences of overlap.

As an adult, no matter how seriously I take my life, I cannot rid myself of an underlying knowing that it is a self-written drama, a big game, albeit one that carries meaningful responsibility. The game starts with a suspended belief in the greater reality, while the handicap is a perception of individual separate identity in a world of cause and effect. In such a way we gain compassion and understanding through walking in a multiplicity of shoes, through many parallel realities, seeing the game of life from an infinity of angles until all conscious experience is sum totalled as one divine consciousness. Through losing the ego in an infinity of selves, we finally acknowledge a unity of being. But if what we discover is our own divinity, where do we go from there?

Many find meaning in just being. It can be sufficient to know that if everyone is an aspect of oneself, a part of the whole unity, then compassion and caring is purpose enough. Some need a God beyond the God: a higher purpose. Since nature delivers sensations of meaningfulness through synchronicity and oneness, the most sensible choice is surely to search for self-understanding through watching the reflection of our strongest thoughts in the outer world mirror, through observing synchronicities as signs of emerging breakthroughs of consciousness, to permit the sensation of oneness to encourage a shift in consciousness, to meditate, to watch our dreams and our visions and to regard everyone as aspects of ourself and, in so doing, learn compassion, empathy, caring and love. Use what you learn to peer as deeply into the Magic Eye ocean as you dare using your growing consciousness to shine a light into the depths until you see the ocean bed. Finally, conquering illusion, open your eyes in enlightenment and wake up from the dream into full consciousness of the greater reality.

I cannot tell you the whole story for I, like you, am a butterfly still encased in a pupa. When my wings unfold and give me flight I will know what it is to be transformed before the full sun. Until then our task is to grow towards the light of full consciousness, to free ourselves from the pupa, to break the bonds of illusion, to escape the dream and to wake up to all that truly is.