Water

Water

From Steven Pinker, Psychology Professor, Harvard University:
Overcoming naive impressions to figure out how things really work is one of humanity’s highest callings.

The next time you take a long sip of water, remind yourself that it is one refreshing drink of dinosaur pee! Yeah that’s right…plants and animals and then later, humans, have been using the same water over and over for millions of years. There is no more or no less water on the earth than when dinosaurs roamed the land. Maybe you even shared a couple of molecules of water in your glass with Cleopatra, or Moses, or Lucy, the human mother of all of us whose fossils were found in Africa. Every day, we are literally walking around in the humidity of our ancestor’s sweat and tears. Earth’s water is indestructible; eternally cycling through its solid, liquid and gas manifestations.

Before humans understood the evaporation cycle, many religious rituals were performed to get God to make “new” water to grow enough food for survival. As modern humans we know water is not spontaneously created and we understand the natural processes at work.

But even we tend to think that the water we drink is gone for good, and that the water that flows from the mountain or rains from the sky is “new.” Even though we tell our kids “Don’t waste water or we’ll run out” the earth won’t actually ever “run out” of water. Humans will just make it unusable or unavailable faster than the earth can recycle it and make it usable.

When you open the lid on a steaming pot, the steam disappears. When the steam is no longer visible, is the water gone? Even though we can’t see it, we have to overcome our naïve impression that it no longer exists. Before science helped us understand evaporation and condensation–and technology gave us the tools to measure them–humans had only their naïve impressions to rely on.

A Hindu Illustration

If the moon is reflected in a cup containing water and the cup is broken and the water runs out, where does the reflection of the moon go? The reflection may be said to have returned to its inseverable identity in the moon itself. If another cup of water is placed in the same spot, another reflection of the moon will be reincarnated.

Transformation

All around me in the natural world, I see things that are seemingly gone for good, but in actuality have only been transformed. I boil water and it turns to steam and disappears, but water cannot be destroyed, only transformed. A bolt of lighting–electrical energy–hits the ground, turns to heat and disappears, but energy cannot be destroyed, only transformed. When we split an atom, a tremendous burst of energy occurs but the mass of the atom is not destroyed, only transformed. The energy from the supernova of a dying star creates a new solar system.

We usually assume that belief in God or heaven or reincarnation is at odds with reasoning and science. But the part of me that observes the forces of nature at work around me thinks that maybe the spark of divinity inside all of us–the part some call our soul–is not created at birth or destroyed at death, just transformed within some unseen, as-yet-unknown natural system at work in our universe, something like the other fundamental systems of nature surrounding us. Maybe we just don’t have the science or technology to observe our soul’s evaporation and condensation. Maybe the naïve impression that we have to overcome is assuming that we cease to exist when we die.

Reflect on these words from Paramahansa Yogananda:
The Self is never born nor does it ever perish. It is birthless, eternal, changeless, ever-same. It is not slain when the body is killed…No weapon can pierce the soul; no fire can burn it; no water can moisten it; nor can any wind wither it.”

The Illusion
Religion is an illusion, and it derives its strength from its readiness to fit in with our instinctual wishful impulses. ~Sigmund Freud

 

Leaving the Only Life I’ve Ever Known
In the place where I was connected,
I was warm, I was fed, I was safe.
But now I feel the world contracting in on me,
And pushing me towards my death.
And although this life has given me all that I could imagine,
I do not want to leave it.
My instinctual wishful impulses want me to believe
That another life follows this one,
That my existence has a purpose,
That I was created as part of someone’s plan-
Someone who will be waiting at the end of this life to welcome me.

I am squeezed into a tunnel,
Farther and farther away from my place of attachment.
When the bond that connects me to this world is severed,
How can I be nourished?
When the kernel of my Self is expelled,
When my body is shed,
Surely I will cease to exist.

With no logical explanation for how or why I could continue to live,
I surrender to the finality of death.
After all, Life after death is just too good to be true.
I choose to accept that I am nothing more than
the natural product of a chain of fortuitous events.
I choose to accept I was brought to life simply to die.
My reason prevails.

I hear the deafening sounds of the absence of silence,
And see the blinding light of the absence of darkness.
And feel the numbing chill of the absence of warmth.

Were my eyes created just to see the light of my destruction?
Was my voice created just to cry out at the moment I leave my body?
Were my ears created just to hear my own fear?
Was I nurtured from a single cell to think and feel,
Only to be undone at the moment of my full development?

The cord is cut; my lungs expand with air.
The sound of my own voice fills my ears.
I am not dead. I am liberated. I am alive and I know.
My purpose in the last life was to develop what I would need in the one to follow.

My creators wrap me in warm softness
Gather me in their arms,
And whisper their love into me.

Birth

When you were a baby in your mother’s womb, it felt like your world was getting smaller, closing in on you and pushing you out into the scary unknown. How could you know that the world wasn’t getting smaller, it wasn’t closing in on you, that instead you were outgrowing it? It was your growth, not your world’s shrinking boundaries causing your discomfort.

And when contractions started, could you have known that the force putting the squeeze on you was part of a natural process pushing you into a new existence? And behind that push was a consciousness, and that even though it caused you pain, it wasn’t a malicious consciousness, but a loving one? And not just a random loving consciousness, but that of your own creator, your mother, waiting to take you into her embrace?

And could you know that the constriction you suffered through the birth canal was exactly what your lungs needed to prepare for breathing air? That the pressure squeezed out the fluid and prepared the breathing muscles to start working?

Rebirth

Maybe the world isn’t getting smaller for us as we grow older. Maybe we’re outgrowing it. Maybe the forces putting the squeeze on us and pushing us out of life are part of a natural process. Maybe there is a consciousness behind the push, and even though it causes pain in our lives, maybe it isn’t a malicious consciousness, but a loving one. And maybe not just a random loving consciousness, but that of our creator. Maybe the suffering we experience as we approach death is preparing us for something we’ll need on the other side.

Maybe, like the baby in the womb, we have to be liberated to vacate the current premises and take a chance on what’s outside.

Life Before Death

From Michael Faraday’s laboratory journal entry #10,040 (March 19 1849):
ALL THIS IS A DREAM. Still examine it by a few experiments. Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature; and in such things as these experiment is the best test of such consistency.

Life after death too good to be true? Life before death is too good to be true! Stardust lands in primordial soup and life is born!? Given the conditions and the chain of fortuitous events that had to occur for life to flourish on Earth, it is an unbelievable miracle that we are even here today.

If we weren’t allowed to believe in things that were too good, if everything that fulfilled our instinctual wishful impulses was an illusion, how could anyone believe in this life? Are the stars too good to be true? Is the sun, the blue sky, the ocean too good to be true? Are my family, my friends… a newborn baby too good to be true? My love? Even with all its imperfection, could anyone believe in the perfection of this life without experiencing it for themselves? Just because something is too good to be true, doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

~Written in July 2007