Dear Wilhelmus de Wilde,
your lines of reasoning remind me of the many near-death experiencers which had been interviewed and can be watched on youtube. They report some similar things. Especially there are cases where the experiencer could take a view into his future (and the things indeed developed due to what he/she saw - but not in the sense of a self-fullfilling prophecy).
Some say that there are these life-lines of me and you, attached with different probabilities. But i would be cautious, because the paranormal can sometimes trick an experiencer with some information that does confirm what he/she does blieve anyways. I would not built a worldview out of what these things, but i restrict myself to only take the phenomenon as existing and the OBE's, the confirmations of what has been seen during the latter and the Healings also, as i annotated in my essay. Because it also could well be that the fact that in a near-death experience one can receive a look into ones own future, this is not due to a lawful metaphysical (mechanical) structure in these realms, but due to the sheer power of the entity which reins there (and knows all our subconsicousness) and which has created our world in the first place.
I would not necessarily connect free will and the measurement process and consciousness as proving that if a quantum event is observed by a human, it does alter its behaviour. Remember that decoherence does explain this phenomenon also, without reference to human observers. Nonetheless i agree that due to free will, the observer can facilitate his/her own life - well, theoretically, but practically there are many things in life that aren't under our control, so i would not attribute a special role to a human observer when it comes to observe some quantum events. This would only lead to self-inflation as it seems obvious to me in esoteric circles, the latter believing that we can create everything we want (due to mere tought-control and such things!).
I agree with you that the ranking of past and future can well be considered as not being rigid in the traditional order, there are possibilities (like i mentioned above) that this time structure isn't fundamental.
Regarding the multiverse approach, i think that it could be that all possibilities are somewhat there in an abstract realm, independently of noticing them or not. But i would not necessarily conclude from this that this is a kind of natural law, but would firstly conclude that it also could well be a strategy for God to trace the possiblities what i will do next with my free will (if he does not know this for sure in advance) and transfer me to a better life-line if i would pray for that (he surely wouln't necessarily transfer me to the life-line *i* would prefer at the moment, but to the one God has identified to be the most likely for me to make it back to him without taking me my free will).
Your essay is highly philosophical and metaphysical. Although the importance of consciousness in the whole scheme of things seems to be guaranteed for me (due to my considerations in my essay and my comments during the current essay contest), it is not entirely clear to me how knowledge about different timelines can solve the puzzles the current essay contest is concerned with. your considerations make some sense, they are - as far as i can see - consistent, but i miss some arguments which could underpin that your assumptions are a logical, means necessary consequence of something other, already known scientific or logical fact. Anyways, you made your case for a reality which is more than a deterministical and reductionistic machinery. Nonetheless, by searching for the meaning of life and all the rest, one has also to consider moral, ethical questions and also the problem of theodizee, the problem of evil - and if one believes in God as a personal intelligent entity, what this entity wants/wishes from us humans - and for us humans. And last but not least, how it is that we do live in a realm separated from this entity. I think if one does ponder about other dimensions and consciousness without such considerations, one has left out some important questions about fundamental reality. But because you have taken at least into account that the mentioned life-time-like dimensions could exist as possibilities, i give you a better rating than i would have done without. Because this could be a possible mechanism to explain the delayed choice experiments (and the other quantum weirdness).
Best wishes,
Stefan Weckbach
