I spent Saturday with a cousin in Houston and his lovely wife, going to a concert in the evening.
While we were sitting in the venue waiting to go upstairs, the conversation went a direction I did not expect. I am something of an outsider in my family, the tolerated weird one, and find broaching the subject of spirituality difficult. We were all raised in a Christian-ish way, and while the family as a whole wasn't particularly out spoken about religion, or religious differences between people, some of the clan is pretty dedicated. My cousin is named Brian, and he is an organic chemist. His sister is married to a minister who started off his religious career in the Episcopalian church, but they have gone off on a more unique path, one that many would call cultish. I do not know all the details, only that I feel my guard going up sometimes when she starts trying to talk to me about faith.
Her baby brother seems to think far more like me, something I would never have guessed at or expected. That says something about how far away we have grown from one another, because there was a time when Bri and I were pretty close. Babies of the family and all. Being that he is a scientist, one might assume that he would be atheist or at least agnostic, finding the rigors of science, the hard cut-and-dried facts, failing to give any support to the notion of a creator. Quite the opposite.
I have always thought the reason I never pursued a scientific career was my understanding of the nature of God. I actually see proof beyond words of the One in the infinitely small (quantum physics) and the infinitely large (astrophysics). They are perfect reflections of each other, moving in precisely the same way. If it is merely some grand coincidence, I am still in awe. I just cannot imagine that everything known and as yet unknown could work under the same apparent method, and not have been caused by some form of intervention. It is too large for us in this physicality we live in to grasp -we are not ready for the final Truth- but that doesn't mean it isn't there. Perhaps the merest whisper is all we are meant to understand.
Anyway, Brian, during the course of a deep conversation, proposed something to me that was totally new, and tremendously insightful. It being that he works with molecular reconstruction, he has quite an understanding of what matter really is, even without being able to see some of its smallest constituents. For those who have forgotten highschool science, matter doesn't die -it simply changes shape. And matter and energy are the same thing really, one just being far more dense, or condensed, than the other. When something dies, or is destroyed, what it was on the molecular level is in essence still there. The atoms that made it up are merely free agents now, able to go onto another task. Brian proposed something about past lives and memory that blew my mind and made me laugh -not out of humour, but realization. It seems so simple in hindsight, and that is probably why it didn't occur to me before. We fight simplicity for some reason, yet admit that the simplest answer is usually the right one.
Let me expound a bit:
Molecules are made up of atoms, atoms of smaller pieces yet, called quarks (let us leave the quantum world for another day.) When a body ceases to live, its molecules and then atoms break down into their original forms, going off to form new things. Thru our consumption of air, water, plants and eventually meat and all the steps in between, we gather back to ourselves some of the atoms of our ancestors. Those people could be of our blood, or merely other people who have walked this earth. Some of our atoms are truly star dust, plunging through our atmosphere daily as meteorites of all sizes. My cousin proposed to me that past lives, ancestral memory, might be related to one form of person passing away and another being formed from what was left behind. In essence, he is saying that memory, that electrical molecular motion inside our physical brains, is retained at the atomic or even subatomic level.
There is a train of thinking in metaphysics that says all knowledge, past, present, and future is contained in a non-place, a part of the spiritual world called the Akashic record. It is available to all who can unlearn thinking patterns to access it. I once had believed it might be a physical place, a library of Alexandria for esoteric learning. I now know that it was never like that, but a way to tap back into the One and remember what has been forgotten. We choose to "forget" when we manifest here, because to have total knowledge, total understanding would make the life experiences we choose (yes, WE CHOOSE) pointless. A baby isn't born knowing everything. Life wouldn't be much fun if you already were full of fear and thus didn't want to try new directions. That is what we are here for, after all: to learn a new perspective on things, so we can take that new thought pattern back to the Source.
To get back on track, what Brian was proposing made so much sense. We are nothing more than a very amazing collection of atoms working together to a common goal for awhile. Our souls, our essence, may be similar in make, thus giving us the ability to retain knowledge between lifetimes. Now, I have a much more Buddhist way of thinking about such things. Living dharma teaches us that all things comes from everything else. When you see a cloud, and then you don't but then you see rain, you are seeing the cloud in a new form. It can become rain, or a river, or the ocean, or the tea in you cup, but it is also still the cloud. All is One.
It goes for us to. Just because my mother passed away doesn't mean she is gone. We put her ashes in the Severn River, not far from where her parents are buried. The ashes went to the Cheaspeake Bay, then out to sea, and in five years time, may actually have found their way back into the ground water in the city where I live, or where my siblings are, or even you. By drinking water at all, even "purified" in a bottle, you may have consumed a bit of my mother's atoms. Now she is part of you , as she was once part of the water. She may be making your garden bloom (she would love that.) Or she may have helped nourish the mother of your new kitten, and passed into your life that way.
And the same thing goes for all things that have been here, and will be here again.
Interesting cycle, hmm?
I think it kind of gives each of us a certain bit of immortality. We are energy, and energy does not die. It merely changes shape. Remember that, and honour your ancestors, every last atom of them.