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We are just learning to look at the past, but we haven't started with the future yet

Until just a century ago, the size of the universe was believed to be only 2,000 light-years. At present, the visible sector of the universe is thought to be about 14.5 billion light-years. And, with the recently launched Webb Space Telescope, those numbers will change and expand.

This is not a column about astronomy, but about the fact that in a century we have vastly expanded our ability to look into the past, because when we look at distant stars or galaxies, we observe them as they were at the moment when their light departed in the direction of the earth.

In other words, in less than a century we learned to look (thanks to new theories and technologies) into the distant past and we could even perhaps begin to investigate what happened in an even more distant past, even before the beginning of our universe.

Something similar happened with our understanding of our own history, which, until just a few centuries ago, was reduced to about 6,000 years and now it goes back millions and millions of years, with long era with limited or no knowledge at all.

All this means that in a short time on the historical scale our consciousness of the past expanded exponentially, and everything indicates that it will continue to do so. But there is not yet a similar expansion of consciousness regarding the future.

It is true that we can now explore about 14.5 billion years of the universe, but if the current laws of the universe held as we know them now, our universe would last about 100 billion years. That means 85% of the universe is future. Again: 85% of the universe is (not “will be”) future, but our current level of consciousness does not perceive that future.

It is said that babies, during their first months of life, only see up 20 inches (approximately) in front of them. Any object beyond that distance will not be perceived by the baby, not because the object does not exist, but because the baby cannot see it yet. Just because we don't see the future doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Then, young children begin to realize that there was a past before them and, in fact, it takes them years to conceptualize that past. For example, there comes a time when they discover that their parents were once children too. However, this expansion of consciousness into the past is not accompanied by a similar expansion into the future.

In short, both at a personal level and at the level of all of humanity, we are just now becoming aware of our past (a consciousness that is still incomplete and fragmentary) and, therefore, perhaps it can be anticipated that at some point we will also be able to expand our consciousness. to include the future. But we are still in the infancy of that process. 

Maybe one day we will see as we are seen, and we will see ourselves as we really are.

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