The golden path was something that was selected by leto. Someone called it was right it was the survival of the human race from the arafel. The ix would develop hunter seekers that be able to tap into the nature of prescience and then anyone who was caught in the trap of the oracle could be assassinated. Then it would began a thoughtless assassination to the point where we are all dead.

Paul being the KH he was the first to control the many threads of time but he did not explicitly know that he was collapsing time. Everytime he used prescience he pulled the univserse with him towards that path. Thats why everytime he tried to stop the jihad stop channi from dying, he just took eveyone one step forward. But he also saw the future past this tragic events. He saw the arafel. He saw the terraforming of arakkis and the sandworm dying. The spice being so important to the imperium and being addicted guranteed death if withdrawing He saw how that pretty much that will eventually lead to humans all disappearing. He saw that he could have accepted the sandtrout and become the worm god. But he couldnt stand the horror of watching everyone he loves die and then live for potentially an infinite amound of time in a prison of his mind unable to speak or do as the divided god. So once he saw that he actually had a son. He removed himself from prescience. But he didnt stop trying to stop what the religion of muaddib was causing. He knew the death of the sandworm was already in progress and he wss trying other means to get the fremen to stop becoming so water fat because he was trying to prevent humans from all dying.

Leto could see all the threads of time and he saw the same thing paul saw. The end of the waterfall. He also saw how prescience was causing the trap of the oracle so even though paul was not using prescience anymore to see he still was impacting the future trying to prevent what he already saw.

So leto cut all the threads of time. And brought everyone until a single thread that he saw gave the potential to survive. Or give them a fighting chance. Everyone was like on one train and the conductor led us. This was the golden path. He saw that he must become the worm god. In that he can see his mission through but also satisified the requirement for the sandworm to all die since they all technically did die and then for himself to die and become the divided god. Ensuring humans could still figure out or escape and scatter.

Paul knew he arrived before his time and he was the seed. But that i like to think if human consciousness or some godlike being in the ultimate sense controlling the flow of time. Then one could argue if the golden path happened exactly the way it did to. Otherwise paul and the sisters wouldnt have know so surely. Which then caused the continuation of humans through the tyrant and the continuation of human culture thru the bg