We’ve all thought at least once about how lucky we are to have ever been born—to have been the one sperm cell out of millions that successfully fertilized the egg that eventually became you. It’s like you won the lottery!
Well, not exactly. It actually goes so much further than that.
Consider your family tree. Not just the past several generations, but the tree that connects all of us to a common ancestor. That thing has an incredible amount of branches, and you are a teensy, tiny twig way out there at the outermost reaches of the tree.
What if one of those connections—those seemingly infinite male-female interactions that produced a new branch on the tree—had happened differently? What if your great-great-great-great-great grandpa Archibald had slept with Sally instead of Susie?
The answer is that you wouldn’t be here right now. Your incredibly unique combination of chromosomes could not and would not exist.
So think of how many unique pairs of parents there have been and how each of them could have been different (not to mention the infinite number of other things that could have been happening at the moment of your conception), and you’ll realize that the actual probability of you being born was 1/∞, or 0.
And yet, here you are. So something must be off with this way of thinking, right?
It was never a question of chance.
I think the reason we arrive at this paradoxical conclusion is that we are identifying ourselves with our bodies. You see, you weren’t that sperm cell, or the egg. You are the Universe. No matter which sperm cell had reached the egg, you (or we) would have been the “soul,” so to speak, that inhabited that body. Had your parents waited a year to conceive, you would still be here, just with different DNA. In other words, you would look and act different because your stream of consciousness (the Universe) would be expressed through different genes. You wouldn’t be lost in the void, never getting the chance to experience life.
In fact, I believe it’s impossible to be anywhere but here.
I believe that the Universe is eternal, and that it is experiencing itself through each and every lifeform contained within it (made of it). It’s constantly shuffling together DNA strands and creating new planets in order to experience everything it possibly can—to experience infinity.
If we are indeed here forever, and we are all one, then the obvious course of action is to treat others as if they were you, because they are you. You will eventually be on the receiving end of all your actions, from the point of view of everyone you will have ever come in contact with. In this way, we decide our fate: Heaven or Hell.
No comments yet.