Beginning of Life
Apr 27th, 2007 by John
The debate goes on:
- Where does life begin?
- When does self-reflective consciousness begin?
- Where does consciousness reside?
I do believe it has been proven that early conditioning begins in the womb as the fetus and its (consciousness, psyche, soul) are subjected to the mother’s responses to her experience. These responses can be emotional, energetic, physical (muscular contractions [patterns], chemical, mental attitudes), and who knows what else. There is but one undifferentiated consciousness at this point that contains mother and infant.
Many wonder, question and pursue knowledge of past lives. I have observed many hours and opportunities in this life wasted on concern with past lives. Of course, the constant projection of the past onto the present by the conditioned (normal) mind means that over 90% of the population is actually involved in the living of a past life.
“Now I am light, now I fly, now I see myself beneath myself, now a god – dance through me!” “There are no facts, only interpretations” “one must have chaos within oneself if one is to be a dancing star.” “Without music, life would be a mistake.” “A man’s maturity – consists in having found again the seriousness one had as a child, at play.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
The bait is the means to get the fish where you want it, catch the fish and you forget the bait. The snare is the means to get the rabbit where you want it, catch the rabbit and forget the snare. Words are the means to get the idea where you want it, catch on to the idea and you forget about the words. Where shall I find a man who forgets about words, and have a word with him? – Chuang Tzu
Image by Jess Artem
I have seen a soul waiting outside its mother, the mother–the vessel was not yet ready for physical conception. This soul, had a great deal of yellow to it before it became a human infant. I know the infant, she is very engaging and their is a great intelligence about her.
I have been present at several passings. I have felt the souls disconnecting from the body. I was 1000 a miles away when one soul in particular separated from the body and I felt it in my own. The soul was very fearful and kept bumping against his shell–body before he was finally able to surrender to the transition.
My experiences suggest to me that life doesn’t end or begin it is a movement through a contiuum of densities.
So, it seems to me that when does life begin–is not quite the clearest question. It seems the question is when do we begin the transition into a denser form–from being a wave-length of light for example to being a wave in humanity. I say that begins when we have chosen our mother.
Indeed life has no beginning and no ending in the broader sense of the soul or consciousness. What say you about the state of annihilation? Is non-being life or does life only arise in the manifestation of being?
John,
You posed several questions. The first question was “What say you about the state of annihilation?” Do you mean the state of an annihilted ego or ego death? Or do you mean the annihilation of soul–where soul understood as a perceptive organ is essentially thrown out of the universe? Since the discussion began with your thoughts regarding beinning of life, I am going to assume that you mean the annhilation/end of a soul since that would be the converse of beginning. The major religious traditions would probably call the state of an annihilated soul–hell. And there are a myriad of ways one can land in hell, according to those traditons.
What say I? I have no knowing on this but I have some experiences from which I begin to question. I know of a personality/ego that when in body did a gret deal of harm. When this ego transitioned out of this life experience, it reviewed its actions and communicated to me. Lots of psychics make their bread and butter from assisting the recently transitioned and those who remain behind resolve some incomplete learning. My experience and accounts of true psychics, is the soul doesn’t necessarily get thrown out of the universe or annhilitaed for causing harm. (Another question arises–when does an ego dissolve after transitioning from the body? What are ghosts? Pieces of calcified egos or stuck souls?) So, I have only eliminated the conclusion provided by the major traditions that one gets sent to hell for participating in the duality of good and bad. However, I have nothing to posit.
Next questions: “Is non-being life or does life only arise in the manifestation of Being? What would non-being be? Being is infinetely small and infiniely expansive. I can not conceive of non-being and yet I assume that non-being exists because Being exists and in all of experience there are the unities: dark/light etc. However, perhaps as the source of all unities, there is only Being and there is no non-being. As a startig point, I would follow the line that life arises from Being and manifests. Mind can speculate about this and postulate ad naseum but it woiuld jsut be an exercies. Being itself would have to reveal the answer to this question and then probably that answer would not lend itself to a description through the medium of words.
Until next time.
Halbert
Annihilation in spiritual or mystical terms usually refers to the soul and not the ego. Ego-death results in the cessation of identification with history, self-images, mental content, emotional and energetic patterns. Awareness, perception and consciousness continue without the ego activity.
Annihilation, as I understand it, is when the soul or consciousness returns into non-being. Which is a little hard to get the mind around as being and non-being exist in a co-emergent state(non-state).
I don’t see the connection to hell, but I think many might agree with you.
So life is manifestation?
In our view, a human being is born a living Presence, a soul, with various essential qualities inherent in that Presence. This living Presence possesses all the potential of humanity, all its properties and capacities. The self of the neonate, with its perceptions, sensations, feelings, images, impulses, processes, and movements, has its ground in primordial Presence, the source of all these psychic manifestations. The essential Presence itself constitutes the identity of the infant, more than any particular manifestation. (A.H. Almaas, The Point of Existence, pg 174)
I agree John that a human being is a composite of essential qualities inherent to its presence. Here are some questions. Just because a life transitioned out of a body doesn’t seem to mean that it’s ego has dissolved. Infact, I think that an ego is active for quite sometime after it has left its body. Does it eventually dissolve that ego, go back to an essential state before re-entering another body and creating another ego? I am assuming re-incarnation here because it seems impossible that in a single life anyone could manage to learn to ‘be’ adequately to become annhiliated.
I could tell you many stories about life lessons that took several
generations of repitition before these lessons started to unwind and stop being taught. Carolyn Myss calls these contracts; Buddhists call it Karma. You dismissed the study of past lives in your original entry. Frankly, I think ignoring the family history and ignoring past life influences limits the ability to understand some of our most petrified behaviors. Sometimes its something even more subtle. For example, today a melange of hate anger and lust came up which I had never experienced before in myself but it was familiar from coming in contact with it from my dad, who I know learned it from his dad, who learned it from his dad. Among these men, it was behaviour response learning. For me, I was just off loading a contact that stuck in my emotional body. If I didn’t know my family history, I would not have able to make the distinction.
So, what say you about family history, karma and re-incarnation ? Are family history karma and re-incarnation just part of the territory, perhaps even stations, between primordial presence and annhilation?
–Halbert
Gurdjieff said that man needs to not only clear himself of personal history but also the entire family lineage back to the beginning of time – thus all of human history must go.
I don’t dismiss reincarnation. My point is that many get distracted by it rather than deal with the life they are leading right now in the present. I’ve known many people who use reincarnation to rationalize how they are, as a support to distract themselves from inner deficiency and as a type of magical thinking.
My experience is that working with one’s present life is all that is needed to unwind the ego and free the soul from its misidentification. The question of reincarnation is moot in regards to psychic structure. If the soul enters this life with influences from past lives that help to create the psychic structure in this present ego, it is created by interacting with the environment in this life and can be challenged and dissolved in the present.
Understanding and space both play an important part in the dissolution of psychic structure. The understanding referred to here is not the same as the conceptualization of our normal daily mind which is a product of reification. My observation is that the notion of reincarnation is one of many tangents the ego mind can use to avoid deficiency. Deficiency is actually a doorway to space which is the entrance to the essential dimensions and true nature.
Insight into this life or past lives can be a by-product of this process but love of the truth and freedom should not be co-opted by the triangulating mind.