A future astronaut may travel to Tau Ceti without leaving his or her living room. Sitting comfortably, gazing down the center of a slowly rotating spiral, the traveler might view a holographic image of the stars in his or her consciousness. The rotating spiral pulls them safely and securely down its vortex toward his or her destination. Our traveler has reached an era where humanity has once more realized that real space and perceptual space are indistinguishable from one another. A second realization would be the one we all had in the beginning of civilization but have been carefully steered away from. This is the understanding that consciousness is a singular phenomenon, and we are all of us like fish who swim through an ocean of awareness. This awareness, rather than being separate little packages of awareness in us lucky humans, as distinguished from the animals, plants and minerals, have been blessed with privatized awareness. Given that awareness extends to the stars and beyond, and that this awareness is ours as well as all else’s, it becomes altogether possible and even probable that we may travel to the stars. Rather, the stars are inside the perimeters of our consciousness, and we just think ourselves there. Welcome to the age where time/space travel is as common as flying to L.A. Perhaps in this era, rather than saying, “You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand it, ” they will be saying “You don’t have to be an artist to understand it. ”
