Birth and Rebirth

Birth and Rebirth

     By Harold Gower

Many years ago, I had an occasion to chat with an old astronomer who was suffering from many ailments that are common with aging. However he seemed to be taking them in stride, and so I asked him, “Do you believe in God? And do you believe in life after death?”

His response was rather surprising.

He said, “The miracle of life! Microscopic at conception! The fetus grows

And grows,

And grows,

Until another miracle happens,

The fetus divides, and then divides again,

Into triplets, Henri, Helen, and Leslie. The gender of Leslie is unclear, but one thing is certain Mother loves them all equally.

“At first they enjoy each other’s company, but by about the seventh month, they become aware that their space is becoming cramped. As one moves an arm or a leg one of the others gets poked. Henri dislikes his brother Leslie and Helen resents her sister Leslie, and Leslie only knows that Henri and Helen are being very mean.

“By the eighth month, the zero dimensional womb is becoming unbearable. Something must be done about Leslie! Something must be done about Henri and Helen! They have no idea; no perception of the realm of three dimensions that awaits them.

“Mama sings to them, and reads to them, and soothes them with her loving hands. Three more weeks! ’Oh please Lord! Give me strength!’

“Finally! One of the three gets a glimpse of light! The cervix is beginning to open. One of the three is moving under great stress! The head is out and then the shoulders.

‘She is gone’, cried Helen. ‘Where did she go?’

‘Gone forever!’ cried Henri, ‘we will never see him again’.

Before Henri could collect his thoughts, Helen was also gone.

 ‘Oh no!’, he thinks, ‘I am all alone; is this the end? Is this all there is to life?’

“Before Henri could gather his thoughts, he feels himself moving headlong down that same channel and through the cervix into the light. What a strange experience! Frightening! Even with his eyes closed he could sense the light. Then he feels the slap on his buttocks, and he wails uncontrollably, and for the first time he feels air in his lungs. He isn’t dead so where are his sister and brother? It will take him several lifetimes to realize the magnificence of this new realm of three dimensions. Each time he learns something new, he is sure that now he has learned all there is to know. How could there possibly be more? When his eyes finally open, he is amazed at what he sees. His sense of wonder is overwhelming. Every direction he turns, his mind is filled with questions.  

“Where do babies come from, Momma? Where do people go when they die? Why do people kill each other? Why do those people hate us? Why do we hate them?

“Years later he is still filled with wonder, still questioning, but now he also has a sense of his mortality, and once again he wonders “Is this all there is to life?” Those eighty-seven years passed so quickly.

“As he contemplates his mortality, he experiences a warm feeling in his chest. His first thought is that he is having the flu, so he lies down hoping it will go away, but instead the pain becomes more intense. His wife calls for an ambulance. On his way to the hospital the pain increases intensely, until he feels himself moving up and away. He turns around and to his shock and amazement; he sees his body lying there in the ambulance with the paramedic giving him increasing amounts of morphine. He thinks, “Oh no I am not ready to die!” at that moment he feels himself move back to his body, turnaround and re-enter it. And at that moment he feels all the pain he had been feeling previously and he realizes that the pain is only in his physical body, because he felt no pain while he was out of body. He also realizes that his spirit, his soul can exist outside his body, and he no longer has a fear of death!

“String theory in quantum mechanics tells us that strings vibrate in higher dimensions of space; ten in all where time is the eleventh dimension. We who are three dimensional, have no perception of those higher dimensions, just as the unborn child in the zero dimensional womb has no perception of our three dimensions into which it is about to be born.

“ It is now clear to me that what we perceive as ‘death’ is a re-birth into those higher dimensions where we shed this three dimensional body, and where all of the wealth and power that are so important to us in this realm are of absolutely no importance in the higher realm. And the purpose of this life is to teach the qualities that are truly important which are love and compassion, forgiveness and generosity, patience and kindness, forbearance and self-control.”

At that moment my good friend the old astronomer, Henri, slipped away into the next realm,

 and Helen and I will soon follow.

Les.