Originally published on Medium on January 6, 2017.
Can we reconcile mystical spirituality with science?
Someone asked me the other day if I believe in past lives, and I had to pause for a moment to try to figure out how best to articulate what I believe about the phenomena of reincarnation.
I believe in atoms. I believe that the 7*10²⁷ atoms that make up my body were made in a star somewhere, probably the star that we depend on for its life giving light and heat, that star we call Sun. I believe that the atoms in my body once belonged to other bodies. And so I believe that my atoms have experienced other lifetimes. Probably many lifetimes, stretching back to the moment those atoms were formed from other atoms in the nuclear furnace that is our star. I believe that when I die, my atoms will scatter and they will enjoy many other lifetimes and experiences, whether human or otherwise. And so, because of my atoms, I have lived an eternity and I will continue to do so.
I’m not sure this was a satisfactory answer to them. I suspect that, since I’m a mystic, they were expecting me to give the standard, “Oh, yes, we’ve all lived many lifetimes and we can remember them and learn from them,” line of thinking.
I don’t really believe that, though. I believe in atoms.
I’m not even sure that I believe my consciousness will continue past my death. I’m okay if it doesn’t. Non-existence doesn’t frighten me. Once I’m dead, the only thing I can be certain of is that my atoms will continue on. Anything else is just a guess.
Memory is a funny thing. It’s notoriously unreliable, and so many people want to believe in past lives that it’s not a stretch that in suggestible states they make stuff up and then forget they made it up. There are occasionally cases that really make you pause, like the little boy that remembers being a fighter pilot, but the skeptic in me wonders if perhaps the parents got a little too excited and suggested the memories to the boy, and after enough repetition, it became his “reality.” It’s really not hard at all to create false memories; in fact, it’s disturbingly easy to do so. If you want to believe something enough, eventually you will.
And yet I can’t deny my own mystical experiences.
Sitting in silent solitude, focusing only on my breath, shrinking my awareness down, down, down until I feel like I’m talking to atoms, and then expanding my awareness out, out, out until I feel like I’m one with the entirety of the Universe.
I believe in atoms, and they are beautiful.
