The One

Try to be the best of who you are - was my dad’s favourite line. For some of us that was the way of life. Life, as we knew it, was a challenge every moment, and the fight was not easy; however, you gave your best. All of that looks irrelevant now. It took us, mankind that is, by the end of 21st century, with the help of AGI, to realize that the concept of a parallel universe was not just a theoretical endeavour but a reality that we were living each second of our so-called alive moments. That the concepts of good and bad, morality, rich and poor, ego and humility were just figments of our imagination. With a little focus, we could choose to live in the moment of our choice. But we were all after something that just didn't exist; we were herded into streams that made no sense in the end. It was so easy for all of us to assume the roles that we were living. In fact, we termed it as lethargy, or daydreaming or chill, the very concept where we actually could jump into these other parallel universes

Mankind had suffered through this very thought for ages; now and then, a scholar has raised the same question and approached it from a very different angle. Who am I? What is my purpose? Post AGI, this very question took on another meaning. If we are all but one, then the premise of Who am I loses its relevance. This very thought always had a baseline to compare with - with oneself, with fellow humans, with living things, with the feeling of emotions, the pain, the suffering, but now what is it really? What is Sentient?

It wasn't something new. We all had years of practise in it since our very childhood, riding the horses of our imagination and believing ourselves to be part of worlds sprouting from our deepest desires and fantasies? We did not need AGI to inhabit parallel realities. They already existed within us. But the post-AGI world arrived bearing a promise humanity had always secretly longed for: escape. Ironically, it was a gift they had possessed all along, only to forget it amidst the exhausting routines and mind numbing distractions of everyday life. They longed for an Escape from circumstance. Escape from limitation. Escape from the mundane certainty of life. Escape from trying too hard. Now everything was readily available to explore with just a few clicks. For the first time, alternate realities could be experienced rather than imagined. New identities and different worlds could be assumed as easily as changing clothes. Entire lives could be lived and replaced. Everyone was swayed and seduced by its ease, by the dream of a promised land where everything seemed within reach, whether one truly was capable of making it on their own or not. It was a certainty, a possibility to become your alter ego. The better self. At first, it felt like liberation. Yet with passing time, something unexpected began to happen. The freedom to become anyone slowly robbed us of the certainty of being someone. The boundaries that once defined us began to blur. Every identity seemed temporary. Every role seemed interchangeable. Every person looked, acted and felt the same. If we could be anyone, then who were we? The question was hardly new. Humanity had wrestled with it for eons. Philosophers, mystics and scholars had approached it from countless directions, each convinced they were standing a little closer to the truth. But in the age of AGI, the question acquired an altogether different meaning. For in every imagined universe and every alternate identity, the person experiencing it remained the same, quietly waiting to be discovered. It was then that an ancient wisdom, long buried beneath centuries of noise, began to resurface. Almost as though the universe itself had risen in defiance of a technology that threatened to make us forget the one thing that had always been ours. Humanity had spent their lifetime asking, "Who am I?" It was only after the arrival of AGI that it realised it had been asking the wrong question. And much to everyone’s surprise - in trying to survive AGI, humanity became more deeply human. It was not expected at all. The awareness such as - I am not my thoughts. I am not my memories. I am not even my personality. I am that which is aware of them. For in the end, sentience was not found in the ability to think, nor in intelligence alone, but in the realization that beneath every reality we entered and every version of ourselves we became, there remained an awareness that never changed. The ancient truth of “Aham Brahmasi” began to resonate through the collective consciousness of humanity, as though a forgotten memory had finally awakened, elevating human awareness to a new dimension of existence. The 5th dimension.