When Does Life Begin
In the debate over abortion, the beginning of life is important, of course, for it marks the presence of a human being. Most pro-life advocates feel life begins at conception with the joining of sperm and egg, and that the embryo is the start of a person. Pro-choice advocates opt for delaying recognition until the birth moment, or wait at least for the moment of viability, though some are willing to affirm life for the fetus, as a gift by the choice to not abort. I prefer to remove the question from the realms of theology and medicine and turn to personal experience. After all, shouldn’t I know better than anyone when life began for me?
“Yes,” you say, “but even though psychologists can take people under hypnosis back to memories in the womb, is memory the real test of self-awareness?”
I say it doesn’t matter. I don’t think we need to answer that question. Awareness is awareness; it has to be there whenever memory grabs hold. Awareness does not depend on mental acuity. Awareness is life saying, “Hi,” to the brain; it is not the other way around.
In other words, my life does not need a starting point, because starting points are human inventions tacked on later for ordering purposes. Life is for living, not for measuring. It is silly to even talk about when it began. Self-awareness inhabits my body; it always has. I am my vitality, and that essence needs no material entrance point for existence. Life is transcendent consciousness. My body is the form my life took, through which my life speaks. And I continue, until biological death, as a so-to-speak whom my parents named Doug, because I “came to hand” and they “felt” a connection with me. Life was not “given” to me; life is “there” to be experienced by my low-level awareness, temporarily limited by my material awareness mechanisms.
According to quantum physics (and who is to argue with good science) consciousness does the “possibility collapsing” of the quantum wave [God]. My awareness choices are my sharing in the entanglement with transcendent consciousness. I was “born” into a physically expanding experience of awareness one autumn morning in 1943. I “mattered” that morning on my own turf, by the cutting of my umbilical tube. In the limited sense of the term, “birth,” I was born, but life is consciousness, a non-individual ultimate essence, and did not begin “then.” My body is but an availability through which my life chooses to speak. A serendipitous mutual sharing of the “vital” and the “physical” outside of time. Others may date the birth moment for temporal convenience.
Pinning down a time when life begins for a fetus is an imaginative exercise. Yet we can know the difference between life and non-life by asking if “feeling” is present. Is an embryo without feeling? (I’m not talking about pain or nerve stimulus.) Who are we adults to say? But feeling is a signal of life. As theoretical physicist, Amit Goswami notes, “Even the primitive prokaryotic cell has the capacity of self-reference; it ‘knows’ in some primitive way about its separateness vis-à-vis its environment.” (Creative Evolution, p.231)
God did not create a human (Adam) and then concocted a “life’ to infuse him, connecting the two elements at some moment of conjunction, leaving us to wonder when each new human form actually comes to life. Forget the abortion controversy of when a fetus is a person. “Life” does not have a “beginning.” Life is. All consciousness is a part of God-consciousness. Creator and creature are symbiotic. My body is God focusing in on a “Doug way” of being--so far a 67 year long, measured focusing. My body that I wash, and feed, and move around, and my existential sense of being are one piece. “I was born” when my existing consciousness-possibility morphosized (as with Adam in another man-version.) The original Garden of Eden twins (Adam and Eve) are my quantum siblings.
I realize this is an uncommon way to look at it. But to me, it seems that the old standoff between science and religion can be considered passé. Scientists and theologians may not be reading each other’s books, but they are beginning to sound like mimics (if you are up on your reading.) Goswami again, “Quantum physics is introducing God-consciousness as the agent of downward consciousness.” (p. 32)
As I understand it, my life came about with an abrupt “collapse” from multiple “possibilities.” My sensual physicality embraced a consciousness urging, and the entangled hierarchy (of heaven and earth) resulted in a healthy cry in the hospital labor room. By biblical analogy, Cain’s “coming to life” occurred in the same manner (quantum possibility collapsing), as with Adam and Eve. We say Cain was born like the rest of us humans, because the Bible says so, and our mental awareness records indicate so. But as data of quantum physics now reveal, each member of the human species taps a real, vital “body” of consciousness that we supramentally identify as oneself, otherwise known as the soul.
My “human” birth was merely a matter of physical viability. To be really alive calls for a new, better birthing--a wakening to my connection with, my entanglement in, my experiencing of the vitality, the feeling of the supramental knowing of entanglement in God-consciousness. The Creator and createe are not separable except in my foggy, material, stunted perception.
This makes the abortion debate a moot issue. “Life” is not extinguishable. Whether we abort a fetus or slay an adult, all that happens is the “un-manifestation” of a life. The material demise may be emotionally traumatic for loved ones left physically functioning in our world, but from the quantum perspective it is not tragic (in the classical definition of this word). Before scientific theories arrived to explain how the universe functions, the only comfort we had as we face the certainty of death was what Jesus offered Nicodemus --to be “born again,”-- that is, to reconnect my material experience with my full born consciousness.
“Come on, Doug. You sound like you are trivializing an act of terror and violence. Do you mean to say that abortion is an insignificant issue, and killing a fetus is acceptable because life goes on to find another manifesting location? Don’t just dance around the issue. Tell me, if your daughter were raped, would you be for or against abortion?”
I would be against it; I want another grandchild. But the decision is for the biological parents to make, the woman having the deciding vote. Whether it would be a sin or not depends on circumstances, not on whether a “life” is cancelled. Indeed, we readily permit intentional killing without judgment in other circumstances--euthanasia, self-defense, capital punishment, killing enemy soldiers (in just wars). Any of these examples of permissible killing will find someone objecting. But sin is not determined by a preponderance of consent. Ordered societies must agree on rules to be followed, but that is ethics, not morality. If all killing is immoral, we should bring the soldiers home immediately.
“Now Doug, you have finally slipped over the edge into gibberish. I had a perfectly good idea of who God my creator is and where I came from before you started in on this “consciousness” stuff. Aren’t you contradicting the Bible?”
Not at all. The new discoveries of quantum science fit nicely into what the Bible and other sacred writings tell us. Are you happy with what macro-materialists Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin had to say, paradigm setters who failed to investigate the micro, inner world? I am not satisfied with these scientists’ explanations of where I came from and the meaning of life.
The good news is that front edge science now has proven that the limited view of Darwinian materialism is flawed with inadequacies and paradoxes, and Newton’s advanced degree is from Material University. The best, most up-to-date scientists are agreeing with the spirit mystics of all religions that life is more than random self-erupting physicality. Materialism explains very little of what each of us knows and feels, and what we are irresistibly moving toward till the day our bodies quit and free us to “live” unbounded. We will then discover that “we” are all entrained together in a flow of “life” beyond temporality.
The nature and source of life is critical to the arguments on both sides of the abortion issue. But both sides mischaracterize the nature of life. Both sides need to recognize that humans, as a species, are not the arbiters of life, either to ignore, delay, or preclude it (pro-choice), or to define its fate and destiny (pro-life). Both sides characteristically argue as if “life” is coterminous with material asperience (yes, I just coined that word--Latin root, to breathe). The assumptions of the debate couched this way are neither scientifically sound (see Goswami on quantum physics) nor biblically accurate (see Jeremiah 1:5, Job 32:8).
Whether to abort or not is a decision of far reaching implications, but whether it is right or wrong depends on other factors than asking when life begins. The more appropriate question is, “What is best?”, which has no set answer. If rules of thumb are to be our guide, Jesus would not have performed good acts on the Sabbath, nor called Lazarus from the tomb.
In a democracy--the form of government most compatible to Christianity--laws of the land reflect the best light that virtuous citizens have on important issues, but when spiritual people disagree in their search for how to act in the face of decisions about starting, ending, prolonging, punishing, confining, or celebrating life, an enlightened inspection of the meaning of life is certainly pertinent. The best science and truest religion do not wear material blinders or lean on catechetical theology. We should pay attention when science confirms teleporting, distant viewing, extrasensory messaging, out of body experiences, and non-local influences (yes, it actually does, cf. Dean Radin, Entangled Minds), and when sacred texts inform us that God knew us before we were formed in our mother‘s womb, and that Jesus reappeared bodily to many witnesses after his crucifixion. We should eagerly embrace the opportunity to nuance and enhance the concept of when life begins.
Doug Good
“Yes,” you say, “but even though psychologists can take people under hypnosis back to memories in the womb, is memory the real test of self-awareness?”
I say it doesn’t matter. I don’t think we need to answer that question. Awareness is awareness; it has to be there whenever memory grabs hold. Awareness does not depend on mental acuity. Awareness is life saying, “Hi,” to the brain; it is not the other way around.
In other words, my life does not need a starting point, because starting points are human inventions tacked on later for ordering purposes. Life is for living, not for measuring. It is silly to even talk about when it began. Self-awareness inhabits my body; it always has. I am my vitality, and that essence needs no material entrance point for existence. Life is transcendent consciousness. My body is the form my life took, through which my life speaks. And I continue, until biological death, as a so-to-speak whom my parents named Doug, because I “came to hand” and they “felt” a connection with me. Life was not “given” to me; life is “there” to be experienced by my low-level awareness, temporarily limited by my material awareness mechanisms.
According to quantum physics (and who is to argue with good science) consciousness does the “possibility collapsing” of the quantum wave [God]. My awareness choices are my sharing in the entanglement with transcendent consciousness. I was “born” into a physically expanding experience of awareness one autumn morning in 1943. I “mattered” that morning on my own turf, by the cutting of my umbilical tube. In the limited sense of the term, “birth,” I was born, but life is consciousness, a non-individual ultimate essence, and did not begin “then.” My body is but an availability through which my life chooses to speak. A serendipitous mutual sharing of the “vital” and the “physical” outside of time. Others may date the birth moment for temporal convenience.
Pinning down a time when life begins for a fetus is an imaginative exercise. Yet we can know the difference between life and non-life by asking if “feeling” is present. Is an embryo without feeling? (I’m not talking about pain or nerve stimulus.) Who are we adults to say? But feeling is a signal of life. As theoretical physicist, Amit Goswami notes, “Even the primitive prokaryotic cell has the capacity of self-reference; it ‘knows’ in some primitive way about its separateness vis-à-vis its environment.” (Creative Evolution, p.231)
God did not create a human (Adam) and then concocted a “life’ to infuse him, connecting the two elements at some moment of conjunction, leaving us to wonder when each new human form actually comes to life. Forget the abortion controversy of when a fetus is a person. “Life” does not have a “beginning.” Life is. All consciousness is a part of God-consciousness. Creator and creature are symbiotic. My body is God focusing in on a “Doug way” of being--so far a 67 year long, measured focusing. My body that I wash, and feed, and move around, and my existential sense of being are one piece. “I was born” when my existing consciousness-possibility morphosized (as with Adam in another man-version.) The original Garden of Eden twins (Adam and Eve) are my quantum siblings.
I realize this is an uncommon way to look at it. But to me, it seems that the old standoff between science and religion can be considered passé. Scientists and theologians may not be reading each other’s books, but they are beginning to sound like mimics (if you are up on your reading.) Goswami again, “Quantum physics is introducing God-consciousness as the agent of downward consciousness.” (p. 32)
As I understand it, my life came about with an abrupt “collapse” from multiple “possibilities.” My sensual physicality embraced a consciousness urging, and the entangled hierarchy (of heaven and earth) resulted in a healthy cry in the hospital labor room. By biblical analogy, Cain’s “coming to life” occurred in the same manner (quantum possibility collapsing), as with Adam and Eve. We say Cain was born like the rest of us humans, because the Bible says so, and our mental awareness records indicate so. But as data of quantum physics now reveal, each member of the human species taps a real, vital “body” of consciousness that we supramentally identify as oneself, otherwise known as the soul.
My “human” birth was merely a matter of physical viability. To be really alive calls for a new, better birthing--a wakening to my connection with, my entanglement in, my experiencing of the vitality, the feeling of the supramental knowing of entanglement in God-consciousness. The Creator and createe are not separable except in my foggy, material, stunted perception.
This makes the abortion debate a moot issue. “Life” is not extinguishable. Whether we abort a fetus or slay an adult, all that happens is the “un-manifestation” of a life. The material demise may be emotionally traumatic for loved ones left physically functioning in our world, but from the quantum perspective it is not tragic (in the classical definition of this word). Before scientific theories arrived to explain how the universe functions, the only comfort we had as we face the certainty of death was what Jesus offered Nicodemus --to be “born again,”-- that is, to reconnect my material experience with my full born consciousness.
“Come on, Doug. You sound like you are trivializing an act of terror and violence. Do you mean to say that abortion is an insignificant issue, and killing a fetus is acceptable because life goes on to find another manifesting location? Don’t just dance around the issue. Tell me, if your daughter were raped, would you be for or against abortion?”
I would be against it; I want another grandchild. But the decision is for the biological parents to make, the woman having the deciding vote. Whether it would be a sin or not depends on circumstances, not on whether a “life” is cancelled. Indeed, we readily permit intentional killing without judgment in other circumstances--euthanasia, self-defense, capital punishment, killing enemy soldiers (in just wars). Any of these examples of permissible killing will find someone objecting. But sin is not determined by a preponderance of consent. Ordered societies must agree on rules to be followed, but that is ethics, not morality. If all killing is immoral, we should bring the soldiers home immediately.
“Now Doug, you have finally slipped over the edge into gibberish. I had a perfectly good idea of who God my creator is and where I came from before you started in on this “consciousness” stuff. Aren’t you contradicting the Bible?”
Not at all. The new discoveries of quantum science fit nicely into what the Bible and other sacred writings tell us. Are you happy with what macro-materialists Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin had to say, paradigm setters who failed to investigate the micro, inner world? I am not satisfied with these scientists’ explanations of where I came from and the meaning of life.
The good news is that front edge science now has proven that the limited view of Darwinian materialism is flawed with inadequacies and paradoxes, and Newton’s advanced degree is from Material University. The best, most up-to-date scientists are agreeing with the spirit mystics of all religions that life is more than random self-erupting physicality. Materialism explains very little of what each of us knows and feels, and what we are irresistibly moving toward till the day our bodies quit and free us to “live” unbounded. We will then discover that “we” are all entrained together in a flow of “life” beyond temporality.
The nature and source of life is critical to the arguments on both sides of the abortion issue. But both sides mischaracterize the nature of life. Both sides need to recognize that humans, as a species, are not the arbiters of life, either to ignore, delay, or preclude it (pro-choice), or to define its fate and destiny (pro-life). Both sides characteristically argue as if “life” is coterminous with material asperience (yes, I just coined that word--Latin root, to breathe). The assumptions of the debate couched this way are neither scientifically sound (see Goswami on quantum physics) nor biblically accurate (see Jeremiah 1:5, Job 32:8).
Whether to abort or not is a decision of far reaching implications, but whether it is right or wrong depends on other factors than asking when life begins. The more appropriate question is, “What is best?”, which has no set answer. If rules of thumb are to be our guide, Jesus would not have performed good acts on the Sabbath, nor called Lazarus from the tomb.
In a democracy--the form of government most compatible to Christianity--laws of the land reflect the best light that virtuous citizens have on important issues, but when spiritual people disagree in their search for how to act in the face of decisions about starting, ending, prolonging, punishing, confining, or celebrating life, an enlightened inspection of the meaning of life is certainly pertinent. The best science and truest religion do not wear material blinders or lean on catechetical theology. We should pay attention when science confirms teleporting, distant viewing, extrasensory messaging, out of body experiences, and non-local influences (yes, it actually does, cf. Dean Radin, Entangled Minds), and when sacred texts inform us that God knew us before we were formed in our mother‘s womb, and that Jesus reappeared bodily to many witnesses after his crucifixion. We should eagerly embrace the opportunity to nuance and enhance the concept of when life begins.
Doug Good
Labels: Abortion, Adam and Eve, Creation, Entangled consciousness, God consciousness, Life begins, Pro-choice. 2008 election, Pro-life, Quantum Physics, Wave collapse
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