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I can't really explain why this is on my mind because things are going well and overall my health is stable right now. Perhaps it is because I woke today to the news of the suicide bombing in Russia that killed over 30 at a major airport, or because I am still shaken by the news of that little girl being hit by a car here in our town last week.
I am thinking today about reincarnation. I am wondering, as we all do, what happens after we die and also why our lives are so easily snuffed out. When I was a child teachers told me that I was pretty smart, which I believed at the time. Now that I'm an adult I recognize every day just how limited my brain and body are (perhaps it is only my heart that has any true intelligence or ability). One of the many things I have tried for decades to wrap my head around, without luck so far, is the question of whether we get only one crack at life... or if we cycle around and around again.
I think people with deep inner faith and conviction already have their answers to this question, and I envy them that. My husband and I go to church regularly with our children and we are deep believers in kindness, generosity, compassion, equality and social justice. (Yes, we're Unitarians... how did you guess? Such a cerebral faith...) Despite my devotion and spiritual quest, though, I lack the deep inner belief to feel (as many of my best friends do) that I am in God's palm.
I'd love to see some proof. Proof that there is an afterlife, that our spirits are not truly limited by bodies that grow old, frail, disabled. Proof that we go on.
Obviously my desire to figure all of it out intensified significantly when I hit my own major health crisis last year. Things are much improved at present and I feel that I am on the mend, however while I hang in limbo not fully knowing where my autoimmunity will take me as the years pass, I continue to wonder, "Is this all there is?"
Which is why I have been closely following the international scientific study taking place at 25 hospitals in the United States, Canada, Britain and Europe led by Dr. Sam Parnia, a Fellow in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York. Dr. Parnia's project, called AWARE (AWAreness during REsucitation) studies the brain and consciousness during clinical death to discover through science what actually happens when we die.
The mechanism of Dr. Parnia's experiment is pretty simple. In each of the hospital resuscitation wards there are images placed upon high shelves that can only be viewed from above.
The hypothesis: If it can be scientifically proven that consciousness continues after the brain switches off, this opens up the very real possibility that consciousness is an entity separate from the body. If there are some cases where the patient sees the pictures on the shelves, this would be a crucial moment in human history - changing the way we view life itself. If no-one at any of the hospitals sees the pictures, it will lend further support to the notion that Near Death Experiences are just illusions or inaccurate memories.
Dr. Parnia's project began in 2008 and is set to wrap up this year, 2011. I don't know how long it will take after collecting the data to publish results, but I believe if there is "good news" it will leak out sooner than later. After all, this would be arguably the most important discovery of all time.
I've got to admit, I'm really hoping some revived patient is going to say, "I heard the nurse say that they should contact my next of kin... and then, what in the heck were those crazy naked pictures doing on the shelves up there? Seriously, what kind of joint are you folks running in here anyway?"
If you're into this kind of subject, the best non-fiction book I have come across about this topic in my many years of researching is "Old Souls: The Scientific Evidence for Past Lives" by Tom Shroder, a journalist and editor for The Washington Post. In the book Shroder recounts his travels with Dr. Ian Stevenson, a psychiatrist and researcher from the University of Virginia who spent his lengthy career investigating spontaneous recollections by children around the world of their past lives and reincarnation experiences.
Over the years Stevenson collected and documented this kind of past life recollection by over 3000 children, noting birthmarks on the child's body that correlated with site of injury on their past life counterpart. Recollections were then compared when possible to factual data about the real people who had died, in order to see if details matched up.
Shroder started the book project as a skeptic and ended it, based upon what he had seen with Stevenson, quite open to the possibility that reincarnation is real.
Jealously, I wish I had embarked on that journey with Shroder and Stevenson - in person, rather than through the pages of a book. I would have loved to have seen any of it for myself, and imagine that was a very transformative trip.
I do not know anyone who has personally experienced a Near Death Experience (or at least anyone who has shared it with me). There are, however, two people very close to me who have passed away and I wonder all of the time where they are, if they can hear me when I talk to (or think about) them, if they are pure energy or actual embodied form.
My husband has also lost two people very close to him, and this is one of the many things that brought us together early on - we both know very personally the anguish of losing a vibrant friend who was just our age.
Our children are very young but they have already been exposed to the concept of death, thanks to the loss of a grandparent, an uncle and other stories they have heard at school from their friends. My five year old son has a classmate whose mother was "shot with a gun, mommy" last year (Afghanistan?) and she did die. My kids ask me a lot of questions about why we die and what happens after.
Ironically, their questions are pretty much the same as mine.
This is what I tell them, at least for now. "I do not know what happens after we die but I would like to believe that life goes on and that in some way we continue. What I do know for sure is that LOVE is the one thing that never dies. My father died but I still love him, and I know that he still loves me. Love lasts forever."
My three year old has taken to parroting this back to me when I kiss him goodnight and tuck him into bed.
"Mommy, I love you."
"I love you too, honey. I love you and your brother and sister more than anything."
"Are you always going to love me?"
"Yes honey, always."
"Even when you die?"
"Yes honey, I will love you all forever. Mommy will love you even after I die... which I don't think will happen until you are a very, very old man."
"Because love lasts forever." He smiles.
"Yes honey, it does."
"Mommy, even when you die someday when you are an old lady, I'll love you forever too."
I think any parent would agree that the intensity of feeling we develop for our children transcends anything else we have ever felt. Surely, such strength of emotion must outlive even our flesh and bones. The fact of their mere existence is miracle enough.
Still, selfishly, I really hope I will be seeing that sweet little soul (and his darling brother and sister, along with their handsome daddy) again and again throughout the millenia.
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